BRIAN VINER reviews The Accountant 2: More bad news for Ben Affleck as his first film since J.Lo divorce is branded 'wildly convoluted' with 'no credibility'

The Accountant 2 (15, 132 mins)
Verdict: Less boring than it sounds
As if to make up for arguably the most boring title of any film in the history of cinema, pipping even Ordinary People (1980) and The Commuter (2018), The Accountant 2 begins with a blaze of action, incongruously enough in a bingo hall.
If you made it through the 2016 original, you'll recall that Ray King (JK Simmons) of the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement department was about to retire.
Now he evidently has retired, which is exactly the kind of dull storyline you might expect from a movie called The Accountant 2. However, something doesn't add up.
There are baddies converging on the bingo hall where Ray is sitting inoffensively at the back, doing some calculations on a paper napkin, and soon they're trying to bump him off.
Ray is getting on a bit (Simmons is 70) but still manages to out-muscle a few super-fit young assassins before they get the better of him, neatly presaging the many absurdities yet to come.
Most of these feature Ben Affleck, returning as autistic number-cruncher Christian Wolff, whose remarkable skills as a mathematical savant are usefully complemented by an awesome talent for punching and shooting his way out of any perilous situation.
Ray is getting on a bit (Simmons is 70) but still manages to out-muscle a few super-fit young assassins before they get the better of him, neatly presaging the many absurdities yet to come (Daniella Pineda and JK Simmons pictured)
Unfortunately, he's not so hot at relating to other people. We see him at a speed-dating event, where he has cooked the algorithms to attract more single women than anyone else, only to muck up his chances by trying to chat up each of them with a line about tax returns. This is quite funny, but it's a one-note joke that soon runs out of steam.
Christian used to deploy his talents for criminal purposes, laundering money for mobsters, but now Ray's former underling Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) needs his help smashing a callous people-trafficking operation.
The key to toppling the bad guys lies in the disappearance of a family from El Salvador, whose fate seems to have something to do with a stony-faced hitwoman (Daniella Pineda).
That makes the plot sound just about accessible. The truth is that you'll need more than a ready reckoner to work out the wild convolutions of The Accountant 2.
Only neurodivergent Christian can get to the bottom of them, and even he needs the help of his younger brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), who similarly is as hard as nails and can shoot a glowering Central American thug between the eyes from 150 yards.
Director Gavin O'Connor and writer Bill Dubuque, the same team as last time, extract some fun from the uneasy relationship between the two siblings, and at least Affleck and Bernthal look vaguely as if they might share the same square-jawed parentage. But if you prefer your action thrillers with a modicum of credibility, you'll need to look elsewhere.
The Accountant 2 is in cinemas now.
Havoc (18, 105 mins)
Verdict: Spectacularly violent
Rating:
Don't expect it from the Netflix thriller Havoc, though — or not unless you can believe in scenes of violence so relentless and extreme that it's a wonder anyone makes it alive to the end of the film.
Havoc stars Tom Hardy as that most hackneyed of characters: the maverick American detective with a messy personal life. It's one of the great film and TV paradoxes that these cops, meant to be fiercely idiosyncratic, in fact submit to every single screen-writing convention.
How often have we seen the likes of Walker (Hardy)? He's usually saddled with a junior partner for whom he acquires a grudging respect (tick). And there is quite often an only child for whom he hurriedly buys a cheap Christmas present, just to make up for being a rubbish dad (tick).
In a way it's a shame that Hardy must abide by these humdrum cliches of the genre, because he's actually pretty terrific in Havoc — as good at being Walker as Clint Eastwood was at being Harry Callahan and Al Pacino was at being Frank Serpico, just to name two other non-conformist cops from the zillions we've seen.
As for the story, it involves police-department corruption, a nasty mayor (hammed up outrageously by Forest Whittaker), a drugs deal gone wrong, and ruthless mobsters from the Far East.
The director is Gareth Evans, the Welshman whose Indonesian gangland films, The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014), didn't just choreograph violent carnage but practically fetishised it.
He does the same here, most memorably in a nightclub dust-up that turns an ice-bucket into an instrument of death, along with more obvious weapons (though less obvious nightclub accessories) such as a meat cleaver and a machine gun.
If you like that sort of thing, it's a heck of a scene. But you've been warned.

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