The latest film releases include The Accountant 2, Until Dawn, Havoc, and On Swift Horses. Weighing in are Tim Grierson, senior U.S. Critic for Screen International and author of This Is How You Make a Movie, and Alison Willmore, film critic for NY Magazine and Vulture.
The Accountant 2
Nearly a decade after the original, Ben Affleck returns as Christian Wolff, an autistic forensic accountant with assassin skills. He leaves his quiet life to solve a murder case, which requires help from his estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a contract killer.
Grierson: “The Accountant 2 … is slightly better because it really leans into its own absurdity in the way the first film did not do. It's also more of a buddy comedy … because Ben Affleck and John Bernthal … are these estranged brothers, they are now working together to unravel a mystery that is admittedly pretty convoluted and is the least interesting thing in this sequel. What's much more fun is just having them together as this odd couple pairing. … Those two actors’ rapport is really nice. … The action sequences are a little bit better. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination. The movie is just disposable fun.”
Willmore: “Film and television has a long history of coding characters as being neurodiverse in some way without ever going to say that out loud. So The Accountant, in explicitly … having its main character be autistic and having him deal with … sensory issues and feelings of frustration for being misunderstood … it at least actually grapples, instead of using the idea of someone being neurodiverse as this vague implication. But it is also, yes, a very Hollywood version of autism that is directly linked to savantism. … The silliness of this lightens up its depictions a lot. … John Bernthal is just so charismatic and funny and delightful in this role, and creates this really much-needed balance for Affleck's character.”
Until Dawn
Adapted from a video game, Clover goes to a remote valley and investigates her sister’s disappearance. She brings her friends, and they’re stuck in a time loop, reliving the same night when a boogie man goes after them.
Willmore: “It's a movie that really reminded me of, at different times, Cabin in the Woods, which is a very meta horror movie, and Happy Death Day, another one that explicitly uses a time loop. … It's less deliberately funny. … But I think there is a cleverness to it that carries it a fair amount. … The one thing that … made this movie stand out to me … is that it’s just surprisingly gory.”
Havoc
Tom Hardy plays a beaten and bruised detective forced to fight his way through the criminal underworld after a drug deal goes bad. As he uncovers a web of corrupt officials, he must rescue a missing politician’s son.
Grierson: “The one thing that it really does have going for it is it’s written and directed by Gareth Evans, who is best known for directing The Raid and the even better sequel. Those were super violent, almost giddily, gratuitously violent movies. And Havoc, when it really, really works, nobody's talking, and people are just punching and shooting. People don't just die because one bullet hits them. They die because they have been shot 15 times in a row. … The movie itself is not very smart, but there are a couple of really good action sequences that make it almost worthwhile.”
Willmore: “It's got this gritty American … corrupt cop drama on one side. And then on the other side, you've got this ‘90s Hong Kong crime melodrama. … This Hong Kong triad, in particular, the matriarch of the family … comes in to avenge her son who gets killed. I was just much more interested in that aspect of the movie. … [Evans] should have just leaned full-on to doing a Hong Kong movie tribute. … It's a very overstuffed movie. There are a lot of factions in there. And there are very few characters to actually latch onto emotionally.”
On Swift Horses
Based on a book of the same name and set in 1950s California, Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is trying to settle into married life. But when her charismatic brother-in-law Julius (Jacob Elordi) shows up, she ends up in a world of underground gambling, desire, and love.
Willmore: “This is actually a movie about how Edgar-Jones’ character and Elordi’s character both are gay, and that Elordi’s character falls in love with … this co-worker when he runs off to Nevada and is working at a casino. And then Edgar-Jones' character gets involved with a neighbor after she also starts this secret life. … I'm not entirely sold on Daisy Edgar-Jones as a lead. I think Elordi is a little better, but he's also a bit more used to holding himself up as this object of desire. His character is a bit more aloof. … It felt like a movie that just had a lot of beautiful settings and beautiful people in it, and never really caught fire to me in terms of a story about finding yourself and about yearning.”
Grierson: “I liked it enough. … It's almost modest to a fault. It's so restrained that, perhaps by design, there's almost a tastefulness about that … not trying to make a traditionally cliched, steamy, repressed love story … that they're trying to do something that's a little maybe more realistic. … There is this melancholy, wistful quality to the film. It does look really beautiful. The movie captures this sense of that period in American history where people went west to find themselves and start over again.”
