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THE ACCOUNTANT 2

Producers: Ben Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams   Director: Gavin O’Connor   Screenplay: Bill Dubuque   Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, J.K. Simmons, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Andrew Howard, Yael Ocasio, Lombardo Boyar, Michael Tourek and Joe Holt   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Grade: C-

It’s astonishing that it took director Gavin O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque nearly a decade to come up with a sequel to their 2016 action movie as bad as “The Accountant 2.”  It was a terrible waste of their time, and watching the result is now a terrible waste of ours.

The movie is designed to be a puzzle composed of two principal parts.  On the one hand it’s a buddy comedy in which Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), the autistic combination of brainiac and fighting machine introduced in the first movie, finally reconciles with his hit-man brother Brax (Jon Bernthal).  On the other it’s a violent action flick in which they, sometimes in tandem with US Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), work to bring down a ruthless human-trafficking organization that runs a prostitution ring and a money-laundering business on the side.  It’s headed, as is indicated early on, by Burke (Robert Morgan), who uses a fish-marketing business as a cover and employs master sniper Cobb (Grant Harvey) as his enforcer.  He’s particularly obsessed with Anaïs (Daniella Pineda), an icy blonde whom he fears will come after him after she recovers the memory she lost in a car crash that, as her doctor (Joe Holt) will eventually reveal, also led to her becoming, via acquired savant syndrome, as expert at assassination as at chess.

The movie actually kicks off with a meeting at a club between Anaïs and Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), the Treasury honcho Wolff met in the first film but who’s now retired and a P.I.  He’s been hired, he explains, by a father searching for his son, who disappeared as a young boy trying to cross the southern border with his parents.  She’s unresponsive to his questions, but it doesn’t matter, because the whole thing is apparently a set-up.  Cobb is across the street with his rifle at the ready, and Burke’s army invades the place, killing King (Simmons goes through a robust fight scene before getting lucky and leaving the movie early) but letting Anaïs escape, much to Burke’s annoyance.

Medina, King’s protégé, follows his posthumous advice to contact Christian, who lives a reclusive life in an RV in Boise, where he’s aided by Justine (Allison Robertson), the nonverbal savant (via an electronic voice provided by Alison Wright) in his effort to live a less socially awkward life; as we’re reintroduced to him, she’s helping him dress for a speed-dating session, which serves (as will a later sequence at a honkytonk) to suggest how irresistible he is to women, the handsome devil, until they’re confronted by the Mr. Spock objectivity with which he views the world.  Medina’s reluctant to deal with Christian, but realizes his intellectual ability can help decipher the clues left behind by King.

He, in turn, decides to contact his estranged brother, a reckless, motor-mouthed murderer, for help. Bernthal’s Brax we’re meant to take as a lovable lout who, presumably, only whacks those who deserve it (though you might feel that “lovable” is going way too far); he’s introduced here via a long, desperately unfunny scene in which he practices arguing, apparently with a former girlfriend, about custody of, presumably, a dog (in the actual call he defers to her at once).  But when Christian calls, just as he’s finishing a job, he immediately leaves the corpses (and a terrified witness) behind because, while still angry that his brother has ignored him for years, he still yearns for some emotional companionship.

So Christian, Brax and Medina join up to solve King’s case, though she eventually abandons them in horror at their methods (Christian’s roughing up the owner of a pizza outfit serving to launder Burke’s money had distressed her earlier. The unfortunate echoes of Pizzagate are hopefully unintentional.)   In any event, their further sleuthing will eventually lead them, through a circuitous route that frankly defies understanding, to a prison camp in Juarez, just as the children housed in brutal conditions there—apparently the kids of the women Burke has forced into prostitution, including a boy named Alberto (Yael Ocasio) related to Anaïs—are about to buried alive by Cobb.  Naturally they foil him by killing off the army of guards defending the place, and Cobb too.  And Brax shows how his humanity has grown by adopting the camp cat as a pet!

This précis should be taken as an approximation, since frankly many of the details of the criminal-enterprise part of the plot—the whys and wherefores of its operation—remain unclear (at one point, for example Cobb kills an old fellow eating in his drab Fort Worth kitchen, whose significance isn’t terribly clear).  There is one sequence in the muddled business, however, that stands out for its cleverness, in which the team of expert young autistic hackers overseen by Justine at the Harbor Neuroscience Academy use the computers they huddle over to extract a photo from the laptop of an oblivious woman, using distraction after distraction to keep her from the screen as they cooperate in fulfilling the mission.  You might deplore what’s happening, thinking that such invasion of privacy could be directed against you, even as you applaud the kids’ triumph.

Otherwise, though, the portion of the picture dealing with the uncovering of Burke’s nefarious enterprises is not just needlessly convoluted but quite unpleasant, and the action sequences scattered throughout it—from the melee involving King at the start, through the boys’ manhandling of foes at regular intervals and the big firefight at Burke’s prison camp at the close—are clumsily choreographed, sloppily shot by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and spastically edited by Richard Pearson.  In fact for the most part the film, with a production design by Jade Healy and costumes by Isis Mussenden, looks drab, apart from the few scenes at the Harbor Academy, and Bryce Dessner’s score is totally unexceptional.

Presumably it’s the human component, particularly the interplay between Christian and Brax, that’s supposed to redeem the action schlock, but here too “The Accountant” misses the mark.  Affleck’s natural stiffness fits his role, and he captures Christian’s combination of physical gawkiness and logical precision nicely (the speed-dating scene and a dance at that honkytonk are pleasant examples); he also carries off the character’s explosions of violence.  And there are a few instances, like a conversation atop his RV, where Christian’s interaction with Brax shows some real depth.  Overall, though, Brax remains, despite his gradual softening, an abrasive fellow, and too often Bernthal’s portrayal of him is simply grating.  Perhaps the future installments that are probably inevitable will allow him to add some further shading to the character.  Among the supporting cast Addai-Robinson is stuck in a thankless role, but Pineda is striking even though Anaïs remains pretty much a visual effect; Simmons is his usual reliable self in what amounts to a cameo. 

“The Accountant 2” winds up as a movie whose individual ingredients aren’t terribly palatable, and they never cohere into a satisfying whole.

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THE WEDDING BANQUET

Producers: Anita Gou, Joe Pirro, Caroline Clark and James Schamus   Director: Andrew Ahn   Screenplay: Andrew Ahn, James Schamus   Cast: Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Bobo Le, Camille Atebe, Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jung   Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: C

This is a film you’d like to embrace—its heart is certainly in the right place—but despite its good intentions it just isn’t very good.  As a remake, moreover, “The Wedding Banquet” invites comparisons to its predecessor, Ang Lee’s cherished film of the same name, and that definitely works to its disadvantage.  It lacks the charm and simplicity of the original.

Lee’s 1993 movie was really a watershed, a romantic comedy about gay romance that became a mainstream success.  (“Philadelphia,” released later that year, was another groundbreaker.)   It followed the traditions of screwball comedy, but a warmhearted vibe infused the story about how, at his roommate’s suggestion, a Taiwanese gay man in Manhattan agrees to marry a poor Chinese girl in order that he can placate his parents back home while helping her secure a green card—leading his parents to travel to America to host a big wedding ceremony that results in surprises galore.

Society has changed over the last thirty-plus years, and so writer-director Andrew Ahn and his collaborator James Schamus (one of the three writers on the original) have updated the scenario substantially, and have elected to complicate it as well, much to its detriment.  They add contrivance after contrivance in an effort to keep the plot surprising, but instead the additions just make it cumbersome.

Min (Han Gi-chan) is a Korean artist living in Seattle with his long-time boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang), a grad student who’s temporarily set his queer studies aside to become a guide for bird-watchers.  They reside in the garage apartment of their best friends Asian American Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), a scientific researcher, and Lee (Lily Gladstone), a professional organizer of Native American descent.

Min is being pressured by his grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) to return to Korea and take over the family corporation; he wants to stay, but his visa will be revoked unless he marries an American citizen.  Chris, however, refuses his proposal, both because he fears commitment and because he’s concerned that their marriage would endanger Min’s inheritance.  Meanwhile Lee wants desperately to become a mother, but her second IVF attempt has failed, and she and Angela may not be able to afford a third.  Speaking of mothers, Angela is reluctant to become one herself, in part because her relationship with her own, May (Joan Chen), was difficult.  They’d been estranged when Angela came out, and though May has since become a prominent activist in the LGBTQ+ community, resentments still linger.

Min has an idea to solve all their problems.  He proposes a sham marriage to Angela, and in return he’ll pay for a third round of IVF treatments for Lee.  All agree, with various degree of enthusiasm or lack thereof, to the idea.  But a glitch quickly arises: Ja-Young announces that’s she’s coming to America for the ceremony.  There follows an amusing scene the remake shares with the original, as Min tries desperately to clear his place of all gay-related material before she arrives.  But she proves far more astute and sensitive than any of them foresee. 

There follow lots of complications, most notably a drunken night Chris and Angela, who were best friends in college before either came out, spend together with predictable results.  Ruptures occur in relationships, as well as one surprising new friendship.  Rest assured, though, that both couples overcome their difficulties by the time the story winds up; the final scene celebrates the enlarged family that results. 

The younger members of the ensemble do solid work, though all are to a certain extent hamstrung by weaknesses in the writing that they have to overcome; the ebullient Han comes off best, largely because Min is spared the melodramatic spasms the rest must endure.  But they’re outshone by their elders, Youn and Chen, the former through her stiff but grave demeanor and the latter through her determinedly bubbly one.  Technically the picture is no better than decent, with ordinary production design (Charlotte Royer) and costumes (Matthew Simonelli), bland cinematography (Ki Jin Kim) and a forgettable score (Jay Wadley).  And overall it’s rather flat, due to Ahn’s slack pacing and Geraud Brisson’s bumpy editing.       

Lee’s “Banquet” was a delicious feast; Ahn’s is digestible, but just barely.