IonicBreezeMachine

After the events of the first film, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), now head of the of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is alerted that her predecessor and mentor, Raymond King (J. K. Simmons), has been killed while looking into an El Salvadorian family and having only left the message "Find the Accountant" as his dying declaration. Despite her reluctance in working with Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) due to his working with the criminal underworld's finances, she enlists his aid in finding out why King was killed while Wolff in turn enlists his estranged younger brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) with the two overcoming their emotional baggage and unravel why King was killed.

The Accountant 2 is the long in development sequel to the 2016 film of the same name. After the first film proved to be a sleeper hit, development began on a sequel albeit in a protracted development cycle that saw Warner Bros. Sell domestic rights for the sequel to Amazon MGM Studios while retaining international rights. Bringing back and refining the strengths that resonated so much with audiences, The Accountant 2 is a tighter and more focused sequel even if it admittedly carries over some shortcomings of its predecessor.

At its core, The Accountant 2 functions as more of a buddy film in comparison to the first film which very much took its cues from familiar "lone wolf"/hitman style action-thrillers while bringing in the unique element of having the character be an accountant as well as on the autistic spectrum. Ben Affleck remains good as Christian Wolff and the movie offers a lot more humor this time around starting off with Christian hacking a dating algorithm in a very humorous scene, but the biggest asset is definitely in the expansion of Jon Bernthal's Brax, revealed in the first film to be Christian's brother and the two have really good chemistry with each other as Christian's quirks are well balanced against Brax's more arrogant swagger in funny but also very human ways. Cynthia Addai-Robinson reprises her role as Medina from the first film, and unlike the original where her story was more parallel she's better integrated and some of her best scenes are in serving as the straightman to Christian and Brax's antics although she is unfortunately sidelined at the climax. The villains are unfortunately very stock (just generic human traffickers without much identity beyond that) and with both this film and its predecessor there's a recurring issue where they create really good characters and dynamics at the forefront while the villains just aren't that engaging (even the usually reliable John Lithgow was sort of lost among the plot of the predecessor).

Odds are if you liked the first film you'll definitely like this one as it delivers on expanded on everything that worked while unfortunately bringing along some of the things that didn't. But the stuff that works is incredibly well done and easily makes itself worth a viewing as well as open for another adventure with these characters which I hope we get.

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is an accountant with high functioning autism who behind his seemingly legitimate small town practice operates as a launderer and auditor for the criminal underworld and possesses an array of combat skills. Taking a legitimate contract for work at technology firm Living Robotics, Wolff is hired by CEO Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) to investigate some apparent irregularities in their financial books first identified by in house accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick). As Wolff works with Dana and confirms her suspicions, this leads to the two of them unearthing a conspiracy within the company that puts targets on both their backs and against his better judgment Wolff risks protecting Dana from whoever is behind the kill order.

The Accountant is a 2016 action-thriller directed by Gavin O'Connor and Bill Bubuqe. The film became a decent sized hit earning $155 million against a $44 million budget and also generated a positive response from audiences. Critical reception tended to be more mixed with many praising the action sequences and performances (particularly Affleck's), but there was also criticism levied against the screenplay which was seen as overly busy and some labeling the film as potentially offensive to autistic individuals due to a prominent neurodivergent character's engaging in violent acts. Taken for what it is, The Accountant provides some traditional genre thrills with an unconventional and engaging lead character.

Despite the film following an accountant, the film follows a pretty familiar framework with some clear DNA traces to films such as John Wick or The Equalizer with maybe a splash of the style of A Beautiful Mind. Ben Affleck does really well as Wolff who certainly falls within the trope of "quiet introspective badass", but there's some good character work that shows him hardening himself against grating stimuli and engaging in meditative or coping mechanisms that allow him an oasis. This is where I disagree with the critics standing on the film portraying autism in a negative way because the titular Accountant does similar moral code motivated actions similar to John Wick or Robert McCall and it falls in line with action movie universe logic and there's really no difference here aside from the character having autism even down to him protecting innocents even if it's at his own expense. Admittedly there's probably a little too much story in the Accountant with all the detours that go into the accountant's childhood, the conspiracy plot, and a side plot involving J. K. Simmons' Raymond King and Cynthia Addal-Robinson's Marybeth Medina working as Treasury Agents investigating the accountant which probably didn't need to be in the movie and admittedly leads to the film feeling more meandering than a straight narrative, but the characters and backstories were so interesting that I didn't mind the main plot had to pause for the detours.

The Accountant takes familiar crime/action thriller tropes and frames them around a unique lead character in an engaging universe. While it's plot deviates from the traditional framework for this kind of movie, it's oddly appropriate to have an unconventional journey for an unconventional character.

Set during November 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, a team of US Navy Seals is tasked with providing cover for Marines from a captured civilian home as the boredom and tedium of surveillance gives way to explosive terror that leads to fight for survival.

Warfare is the latest film from Alex Garland which reteams him with Military Veteran and Advisor Ray Mendoza who worked with Garland on the previous year's Civil War. Garland worked in tandem with Mendoza (with Garland stating he was mainly there in a supporting capacity to Mendoza). Based on the Mendoza's first hand experiences during a 2006 battle in Ramadi, Iraq, the film is told in real time and based entirely on the memories of the soldiers who were there during the event. In terms of filmmaking and craft Warfare certainly is admirable on a technical level, but substantively there's little more here than the old History Channel docuseries Shootout.

If there's anything to be said about Warfare, it's certainly in placing you in a "boots on the ground" experience in terms of what the modern warfare experience is. If you ask former veterans of any war, much of the time they will emphasize the nature of the experience is strings of continuous tedium occasionally broken up by chaotic terror. During the opening 20 minutes there's very little that actually happens as the unit we follow takes a sniper position in a civilian home and looks over a marketplace where very little actually transpires and they can't talk or do anything to kill time because they need to stay alert to stay alive. Once the "action" actually does start, Warfare delivers on the ugly chaos that defines warfare. The transition from quiet tedium to bombastic terror happens on a dime and it certainly is well captured in its brutality and ugliness.

In terms of technical craft Warfare is second to none, but during the films brisk roughly 90 minute runtime I felt myself become more indifferent to what was happening with not much reason to care. As a way of subverting the expectations of other war films, Warfare foregoes many of the scenes used to build character such as the soldiers bonding over "what's back home" or "why they enlisted" and while those elements are common tropes of the genre dating back to the earliest war films of cinema they are necessary in order to make sure the audience has a reason to care. With Warfare it's very much a case of "throwing the audience in the deep-end" because outside of text establishing the Navy SEALs mission of "providing support to the Marines" there's no real sense of purpose here to this story nore are there any characters as there's no real scenes of fleshing out the characters to the point I couldn't really identify anyone by name. It could be argued that the purposelessness is part of the point particularly with the ending and how the Iraqi insurgents are rarely ever seen with no possible road to victory serving as a commentary on the pointlessness of war, but the movie takes such a detatched view of events that it feels like (if you'll pardon the cliché) "sound and fury signifying nothing".

Warfare isn't without technical merit, but that's really all it has going for it. You probably get more from an average episode of the History Channel show Shootout because at least there the talking head interviews from people who were there provide some character and investment, whereas here, it's more violent and polished than what you get on TV but if you're point is "War is hell and pointless" (which I've heard some argue isn't necessarily the point) that doesn't really justify why we're told what's barely a story.