Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal are back in action in The Accountant 2, and this time, they’re diving deeper into brotherhood and using their own methods to save the day in the high-octane thriller.
Following a special screening in downtown Manhattan, for the Amazon MGM Studios film, the actors, along with co-stars Cynthia Addai-Robinson and Daniella Pineda, sat down with Blavity’s Shadow and Act to talk about reuniting on-screen, working with director Gavin O’Connor again, and why the film’s emotional core hits just as hard as its action sequences.
“One of the things about sometimes the sort of the way that companies and their transition—because Warner Bros. has been through a bunch of strategic evolutions in terms of how they were trying to reach audiences,” Affleck told Blavity Shadow and Act when speaking about the path to making this film almost a decade later. “So it was going to be done for streaming, and then they were going to do a television show. There’s a pretty boring answer to that, but the cool part about it was that the amount of time that passed gave us an interesting opportunity to tell the story [and] to incorporate that amount of time into the story and come into it from a point of view of these guys haven’t seen each other for a long time. That gave us the chance not to just kind of rehash the first movie and try to rearrange it, but to actually tell a new story and to go deeper into these guys’ relationship and use that as the catalyst to drive the whole story forward.”
Bernthal said, “You never know how those things are going to work. We really didn’t get to work too much together in the first film. We were sort of on separate tracks, but we came together and we had a great time sort of immediately. And I really love coming to work on this one. I think when you look at Gavin and the movies that he makes, he always explores the sort of complexities and the nuances and the struggles and just how complicated brotherhood [and] father-son relationships [are]. I think what’s so interesting about this one is the first movie really provides a great backstory for where you really get to see where they come from. And if you’re a fan of the first movie, you’ll really see how that sort of plays out. And I think it’s—for me—it almost seems like a continuation. It’s a great thing when you go into a movie like this and it’s made by and with the exact same people because Bill Dubuque, who wrote it, he clearly knows these characters extremely well and you see that they’re definitely a product of that father and those flashbacks from the first movie. You really see it, I think, in this one.”
How does ‘The Accountant 2’ expand on family dynamics and character growth?
Affleck later reflected on the film’s tone, especially its humor, and how it emerges naturally from the characters rather than feeling forced or out of place.
“It’s the kind of levity that I’m really drawn to, or that I feel like I kind of understand well enough to try to do,” he said. “And it’s the kind of humor that comes from where humor comes from for us in life, which is oftentimes in the context of serious situations or stressful situations—to why you have gallows humor or you use humor to bond over difficult things. Or we as human beings kind of need to find humor in, even in the trials and tribulations of everyday life in order to make life tolerable during its difficult times. So it’s really character-based humor. Then, if you’re really lucky, you get cast in a part that kind of creates a real opportunity to do character-based humor. And if you’re even luckier, you have someone on the other part where it’s a great part and they really know what they’re doing. So playing those scenes with Jon just felt like… I’ve never played tennis… but I imagine if you did play tennis and you were really good at it, it would feel like hitting the ball really well to somebody and them hitting it back in a way that was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t think he would get to it,’ and then kind of do what he did with it. And that was the joy of this movie for me.”
What was it like reuniting for the sequel?
On working together again, Affleck added, “I’m really proud of this, and getting to work with Jon was definitely the high point of this whole thing.”
Bernthal echoed the sentiment, saying, “Getting to work with him was definitely the best part, but the movie is—it’s very special. I think both of us… our kids, even though it is a Rated-R movie, this is actually a great kids’ movie. I think that’s sort of like the 13- to 16-year-old boys’ range.”
“My son is like, ‘You finally made a good movie,’” Affleck added with a laugh.
Directed by O’Connor, the film is produced by Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams, with by Bill Dubuque. Allison Robertson and J.K. Simmons also star.
The film hits theaters this Friday.
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