With action thriller The Accountant having proved a major box office hit back in 2016, it only made sense to get the band back together for another outing. The Accountant 2 finds director Gavin O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque back in the saddle, while Ben Affleck once again reprises his role as Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant who launders money for some of the world’s most dangerous criminals.

This time around, when someone close to her is killed by unknown assassins, Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is forced to contact Christian to solve the murder. With the help of his estranged but lethal brother Brax (Jon Bernthal), Chris uses his acute intellect and sharply honed fighting skills to chase down the killers.

It’s another hugely enjoyable romp, brimming with memorable action set-pieces and comedic flourishes, with the cutting exchanges between Affleck and Bernthal again proving a highlight. Although Affleck has rarely done sequels throughout his lengthy career, The Accountant team’s unique creative chemistry proved irresistible.

“The first one was successful and I was really proud of it,” he reflects. “But it had a longer life in terms of the feedback I get from people – it was one of the movies they would mention when they came up to me. So I definitely was aware of like, ‘Wow, that movie still seems to be watched.’ It’s also a function of the fact that streaming really started to take off after this movie, so people had the opportunity to pick what film they were going to watch and that sort of thing.

“Also, I love this character and really enjoy playing him. And Gavin and I were very much drawn to the idea of bringing Jon back, and expanding on that. Because we were both like, ‘This guy’s fabulous and we love it.’ We both felt there was a lot more to do. So the people involved really brought me back – in the intervening years, Gavin and Bill spent a lot of time developing and putting together what it could be, in a very meticulous, character-driven way. That’s typical of Gavin.

“Both were quite mindful of not wanting to repeat the first one. So everything about it was appealing.”

As the shades-wearing, cocksure Brax, Bernthal undoubtedly delivers another dynamite performance. Indeed, his career has risen to a new level over the past few years, especially on the back of his tour de force as corrupt cop Wayne Jenkins in We Own This City, the acclaimed HBO drama from The Wire creator David Simon.

How was it re-establishing the odd couple dynamic with Affleck?

“I don’t know that I was ever really told that,” chuckles Bernthal. “Bill’s writing is still unbelievably strong, and Gavin and I are very close. You work with Gavin, and he’s always going to whittle it down and get to the truth of the character – there’s no stone left unturned. It was a real thrill for me to get back, and with Ben, the comedic vibe just kind of happened that way.

MOMENTS OF TRUTH

“It’s there, but it was very much supported by Gavin, who lets moments linger and exist naturally. It’s also about playing the moments in between the beats. Ben is unbelievably funny, and it sounds corny, but he has just mastered this character in such a way, that there are so many little moments of truth.

“You love those moments, but they can also drive you crazy from the right point of view. I was let off the leash to have a real opinion about that.”

As Treasury agent Marybeth Medina, meanwhile, Cynthia Addai-Robinson was excited to explore new facets of the character.

“I always viewed Marybeth as the entry point for the audience, because she’s sort of observing and seeing all these things around her, and reacting in kind,” she says. “For myself as an actor, it was the same thing. I think back to working on the first movie, and I was nervous and out of my depth in a way. I was just trying to present as if I wasn’t, and for Marybeth, it was a similar type of situation.

“Here we are, eight years later when we started on the sequel, and Marybeth has evolved and grown. She’s in this elevated position within the Treasury department, and it was really nice for her to go, ‘Okay, I feel like I can handle what’s now getting thrown at me’, which was this dynamic with Ben and Jon’s characters. Again, I was that point of entry for the audience.

“So all of their shenanigans, I just got to bear witness to and be like, ‘Alright, these guys are kind of crazy, and also challenging my view of how to serve justice, really.’”

Affleck also offers his thoughts on Addai-Robinson’s dramatic arc.

“In this movie, Cynthia is the protagonist, really,” he says. “She’s the lead and the entrée for the audience, which means we get to play character parts. There are a whole bunch of expectations that go with

being the lead in the movie, because as Cynthia says, the audience is really projecting themselves onto you. So in some ways, we’re a dual aggravation to her.

Ben Affleck (Christian Wolff), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Marybeth Medina), Director Gavin O'Connor, and Jon Bernthal (Brax) in ACCOUNTANT 2 Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC

VOTE OF CONFIDENCE

“And if you look at the math of the story, it’s about her seeing this person be killed, and trying to find out what happened, and the resolution of that. That’s something I find very artful and interesting. This person is the lead of the movie and you have these dual character actors, so that affords Jon and I the luxury of doing the two-hander, odd couple thing.”

“What’s very satisfying is we’ve now had opportunities to see the movie with audiences,” adds Addai-Robinson, “and when you hear an audience audibly gasp, you know you’re doing something right. Because it means with the stakes and how invested they are in these characters, they are literally leaning forward. With each blow, it’s like ‘Wow!’ It’s a nice vote of confidence.”

As for how he handled the action scenes in The Accountant 2, Affleck is full of praise for O’Connor’s directorial flair.

“What made me think the audience would feel something is that Gavin’s approach is not about, ‘This is a shot where visually it looks cool because of x, y and z’,” says the actor. “It’s not reverse engineered,

where you conceive the shot, and then you have to figure out why in the world you’d be doing such an action. It’s always driven by, ‘What does this character want? Why are they doing this?’

“There’s a grounded reason for it. And his gift is to take that and make it visually compelling.”

How did Bernthal balance his emotional arc with the action scenes?

“You can’t lie in a fight,” he responds. “What you want is right there, so you’ve just got to know what you’re going for and why. More than any director I’ve ever worked with, Gavin has an appetite and an availability to go back, and really go into what makes these guys tick. He’ll talk to you as long as you want to talk to him, about where these guys came from.

“And what’s so beautiful about this being a second film, is that particularly for me, Brax was really shrouded in mystery in the first. You really don’t know too much about him, but you have these amazing flashbacks to see how these two boys were raised, and their relationship with their dad. It really is the crux of what’s bothering them, and particularly Brax.

“It’s about the roles that we’ve always filled for each other – having to be there, and the lack of being there. It’s all part of it. And it doesn’t just culminate in a gunfight, it culminates in, ‘Hey, I’m there for you. I have your back and you have mine – we’re joined forever.’ And for lack of a better word, it’s a way of showing how much you love somebody. Violence can actually be that sometimes.”

As well as the banter between Affleck and Bernthal, The Accountant 2 extracts much comedic mileage from Christian’s search for love. This time around, we see him speed-dating and even – wait for it – line-dancing. It certainly wasn’t something we were expecting.

“America wasn’t expecting it,” quips Affleck. “America wasn’t asking for it – but they’re getting it! We’ll see what happens; that’s what I mean when I say we’re making some big swings! But it was one of the fun things about the movie. Here’s a guy who wants to have a relationship with a woman, and he’s trying to figure out how to do that. He’s not comfortable extending himself, he doesn’t really know how to flirt exactly.

“It’s not easy for anyone figuring out relationships. Particularly the very early part where you’re trying to gauge, ‘What does this signal mean? Does this person like me? Am I gonna humiliate myself if I go over there?’ What he does is kind of a lovely thing, in that he uses something he’s comfortable with – the ability to identify the pattern of line dancing – to participate.

“I’m probably not going to get a lot more demands for my line dancing work – the phone hasn’t rung yet! – but it was really fun.”

• The Accountant 2 is out now.