Why The Accountant 2’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Is So Much Better Than The First Movie

The Accountant 2 was just released in theaters, and the movie is actually earning quite a bit of favor from movie critics and doing better on Rotten Tomatoes than the original. Currently, the movie has a certified fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with a 75% rating from all critics, and a 65% rating from top critics, meaning that The Accountant 2‘s reviews are shaping up to be quite the success story.

While there have been plenty of great action movies in recent years, with the John Wick franchise as the biggest example of excellence in the genre, there are still a lot of mediocre action films that are released and then immediately forgotten. While the sequel could’ve easily become one of those projects, The Accountant 2 has struck a chord with critics, who are generally harsher on these kinds of movies than audiences, leading to The Accountant 2 managing to earn a higher RT score than the original 2016 movie did.

Why Critics Were So Mixed On The Accountant

The Movie Didn’t Manage To Sway Many Critics

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The first Accountant movie came out in 2016, and focused on Ben Affleck’s Christian Wolff becoming increasingly entangled in the criminal underworld, fighting off hitmen as he unravels a deep conspiracy within a robotics company. Unfortunately, critics were quite mixed on the movie, as The Accountant only ended up with a 53% score on Rotten Tomatoes, for a number of reasons. The biggest point of contention is one trap that many action movies fall into, that being a pretty weak story that only really acted as a distraction to the action scenes.

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While a simple or uninteresting story can be saved by great action, critics seemingly thought that The Accountant didn’t have anything unique or well-executed enough to save the weak plot and writing. Another major criticism of the movie was that there were simply too many side plots and characters strewn throughout, leading to the movie feeling unfocused and difficult to get invested in. Many great action flicks of the past few years have been extremely focused on one character in one story, and The Accountant didn’t manage to emulate that feeling.

The Accountant 2 Fixed Several Criticisms Of The First Movie

The Sequel Seems To Be A Direct Improvement Over The First

Thankfully, The Accountant 2 very clearly learned from the franchise’s first outing, as the sequel improved upon the original in multiple ways, becoming a very solid action movie that could be the true start of a larger Accountant franchise. One of the biggest fixes is that the story is much tighter in The Accountant 2, focusing very heavily on the two leads, crafting a narrative that fits perfectly within the action film framework. While the story seems to be nothing special, this time the film managed to elevate the weaker plot with its solid characters and action.

Jon Bernthal was one of the better characters in the original movie, so him having an expanded role is a huge improvement for The Accountant 2. Another one of the major pieces of praise strewn throughout the reviews was Bernthal and Affleck’s great chemistry, so the decision to have them co-lead the film together clearly paid off when it came to the critical reviews. Finally, while the first movie had solid enough action, The Accountant 2 has seemingly upped the ante quite a bit, with action set pieces that gave the film a sense of uniqueness that the original lacked.

The Accountant 2

7/10

Release Date

April 25, 2025

Runtime

124 minutes

Director

Gavin O’Connor

Writers

Bill Dubuque

Producers

Ben Affleck, Kevin Halloran, Matt Damon, Jamie Patricof, Lynette Howell Taylor, Scott LaStaiti, Michael Joe, Mark Williams, Alison Winter