Is it The Accountant 2?  I ask because during the opening credits, it was rendered as The Accountant².  I get what they are going for since the main character, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) fills the title job and is generally good at math.  However, I read that as “The Accountant Squared.”  I am not the best mathematician, but would that not equal to four movies?  Anyway, I am probably over thinking the title instead of contemplating the substance, which actually moved me to a certain degree.  With The Accountant (2016), I discussed how people on the autism spectrum should be celebrated for their differences, not treated as freaks and shunned because they are different.  Who are we to say that God did not bless such people?  There is some of this in The Accountant 2 (and I will be using that designation henceforth because it is easier to type), but ultimately he and his brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal), end up protecting children.  What can I say, I am a sucker for plots involving defending the weak.

In a sense, that is what Raymond “Ray” King (J. K. Simmons) is trying to do at the beginning of The Accountant 2.  Since retiring as the director of the United States’ Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), he has become a private investigator, taking on cases that have a personal interest to him.  To this end, he is meeting with a mysterious woman named Anaïs (Daniella Pineda).  Showing her a picture of a migrant family, he tells her that she is the only one who can help.  Watching this rendezvous are a number of tough men who do not agree with these actions.  They voice their displeasure by attacking Ray as soon as Anaïs leaves.  Though he survives the initial onslaught, he is felled by a bullet fired by another assassin named Cobb (Grant Harvey).  He is working for Burke (Robert Morgan), the head of a criminal organization that takes advantage of needy people trying to enter the United States.  The men are killed, the women are sold into prostitution, and the children are enslaved.  Before Ray dies, he had been able to write on his arm “Find the accountant.”  The message is viewed by FinCEN’s newest deputy director, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who once worked with Ray and had been close to him.  She knows what the words mean.  Using the business card for Harbor Neuroscience, a New Hampshire institution specializing in helping children on the autism spectrum, she calls hoping to contact Christian.  From previous experience, she knows that he gets help from the people residing there, led by a non-verbal woman named Justine (Allison Robertson, voiced by Alison Wright).  Though they have never met, Marybeth knows that Justine is Christian’s “guy in the chair,” so to speak, using technology to give herself a voice and render Christian assistance.  Eventually, Christian finds her, though we have seen him already trying to find a way to connect with people in a scene that I think is supposed to be taken as comedic relief.  It involves speed dating, and that is enough said.  Marybeth is apprehensive about asking for Christian’s help because she knows of his propensity for violence, not to mention the fact that he is known for fixing the accounting of some questionable people around the world.  Together, they begin collating everything they have so far on Ray’s murder, which leads them to a front for one of Burke’s businesses, as well as the name of the woman in the picture.  As before, Christian is a bit aggressive for Marybeth’s tastes, but they learn that a local pimp named Tomas has information about the operation.  Still, they need more help to get further, so Christian turns to Braxton and Justine.  Braxton provides the added muscle they need in bringing in Tomas, while Justine is able to get a positive identification of Anaïs by hacking into the phone of a woman taking a selfie, which they noticed on surveillance cameras from the night of the shooting.  Marybeth has qualms about the invasion of privacy, not to mention having Tomas tied up in the back of her car, so she breaks with the brothers and turns Tomas over to the authorities.  Unfortunately, he is killed by Cobb before he can implicate Burke.  Meanwhile, the smuggler turns to Batu (Andrew Howard), the head of an Eastern European death squad that also employs Braxton, to assassinate Marybeth.  Though Braxton turns it down, Anaïs takes the job.  Christian sees the exchange on Braxton’s phone and rushes to her, only to get there after Anaïs has seriously stabbed Marybeth.  What gives Anaïs pause is when she sees the same picture on Marybeth’s wall that had been shown her by Ray.  Staring at it brings back lost memories.  As we have seen before this scene with Marybeth’s separate investigation, Anaïs is the woman in the picture.  She had gotten into an accident and lost her memory, but came out of it with a more aggressive streak.  When Christian arrives, while tending to Marybeth’s wound, he informs Anaïs that her son, Alberto (Yael Ocasio), is still alive in a prison camp in Juarez, Mexico.  With all the recent failures, Burke orders Cobb to go to that same location and kill all the kids in their custody, including Alberto.  Against Braxton’s better judgement, he goes with Christian to stop the massacre.  They are successful, and it turns out that Alberto is like Christian, thus they take him to Harbor Neuroscience.  Meanwhile, Anaïs gets her revenge on Burke, traveling to his hideout in Costa Rica to get her revenge.  Finally, as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is combing through Burke’s warehouse, Marybeth puts in a call to Harbor Neuroscience to thank them for their help.

There is not much more I can say in helping you understand The Accountant 2 that would be different from what I had to say about the previous film.  I already reiterated as much in the introduction, but it is still worth repeating that we are all precious in God’s eyes no matter our challenges.  At the same time, I am not here to give you a duplicate review, even if the movies do share similar themes.  There is one aspect, though, that bears some further analysis.  As Anaïs recovers from the accident that made her lose her memory, she develops what is referred to as acquired savant syndrome.  This is not a fancy sounding medical term made up for the movie.  Instead, it refers to rare moments when a person develops extra abilities as the result of some sort of neurological trauma.  For Anaïs, this results in greater cognitive abilities, but also the previously discussed aggression.  Setting aside the aggression for a moment, this got me thinking about God’s role in such events.  It may sound strange to bring Faith into this discussion, but the uniqueness of this happening to people is such that it can be described as an “act of God.”  We use this phrase whenever something random happens that we cannot predict, though we usually apply it to the weather.  Scientifically, researchers have seemingly been unable to explain why it happens.  If they were able to, we would have unlocked a larger understanding of how the brain works, and we would be tapping into more of our mind’s potential.  Either way, God’s hand is upon these moments.  It is worth restating that Faith and science are not opposed to each other, even if it appears (to some) that being able to utilize more of that gray matter between our ears will make us more like God and thus somehow need Him less.  Such thinking ignores what God is about, and that is love, the kind of sacrificial love demonstrated by Braxton and Christian in rescuing the children.  Like suddenly understanding foreign languages better, God is about grace (which are Divine gifts), not power.

Speaking of power, it is a powerful moment at the end of The Accountant 2 when Braxton and Christian save the children.  They may not be the best men morally speaking, but God uses some unexpected people to do His will.  I do not know if this is a reason to watch the movie, but is as good any other I could give you.