Ben Affleck punches, kicks and shoots his way out of an array of dangerous situations over the two-hour-plus runtime of The Accountant 2, but at the Saturday night SXSW premiere of the movie Affleck revealed the film’s most difficult stunt: Choreography.
“For me, the challenge, of course, was the months and months I spent training to line dance,” jokes Affleck from the stage of Austin’s Paramount theater. Affleck was referencing a mid-film scene where his accountant/killer Christian Wolff adroitly line dances in a Los Angeles dive bar after picking up the dance moves in second (as established in the first film, Wolff has acute savant syndrome). “Tom Cruise has nothing on me,” Affleck added. “Just in terms of line dancing!”
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The Accountant 2 follows Wolff, an autistic accountant and a favorite CPA of crime bosses, as he is compelled to solve an old acquaintance’s murder, recruiting his killer-for-hire brother (Jon Bernthal) to help, and, in the process, uncovers a deadly conspiracy.
The Accountant 2 also stars Daniel Pineda, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and several young neurodivergent performers who were cast from Los Angeles area programs. “There’s a live experience. These actors came with their own individual stories that made their characters richer and then gave all of us so many ideas that we simply couldn’t come up with on our own,” says producer Lynette Howell Taylor of the casting process. “The actors aren’t playing themselves, they are just bringing parts of their personality to the characters they are playing.”
Gavin O’Connor is back in the director’s chair for the follow-up to the 2016 movie, which film earned $155 million at the box office. The sequel had been stuck for years in development before the project jumped to Amazon, where it was fast-tracked. “If you slow down, you go down, so we just keep pressing forward,” said O’Connor, citing Afflekc and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity as the reason the film finally came to fruition. Damon was also on hand at the premiere, sitting next to Affleck in the audience.
As for wanting to revisit the character, Affleck said, “The central appeal to me was always to expand on my work with Jon.” For his part, Bernthal was most excited to reunite with Affleck, saying, “Ben is a hero of mine and I admire him so much.”
A sheepish Affleck interjected: ”You don’t have to say that.” But Bernthal continued: “He is equal parts a beautiful person as he is a beautiful artist. Making movies for me is usually knocking my head into a wall and kind of hating myself, so this was very easy.”
The high octane movie seemed to delight the Austin audience, and O’Connor implored not to spoil the movie for any potential future audiences before it hits theaters on April 25. Affleck added, “Please don’t talk about my nude scene.” O’Connor played along, adding, “There was a nude scene but we cut it out. He practiced line dancing in front of a mirror, naked.” Affleck closed: “It was a choice and I liked it.”
