Need for a sequel doesn't add up with Accountant 2

While the 2016 original appeared to respect the protagonist's neurodivergence, this belated follow-up teeters on the edge of making his autism a punchline, writes Clarisse Loughrey

- Clarisse Loughrey

There are few reasons to revisit The Accountant, the bogstandard 2016 thriller whose only distinguishing feature was the fact that Ben Affleck's protagonist was explicitly characterised as autistic. But if you were to revisit it, surely it’d be to retool the character to better reflect the neurodivergent experience? In the first film, we’re told that when Christian Wolff (Affleck) was diagnosed, as a child, his father’s immediate response was to train both him and his brother (Jon Bernthal’s Braxton) in the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat, leading the latter to become a hitman and the former an accountant for criminals and terrorists.