‘The Accountant 2’ director calls Ben Affleck’s performance a ‘masterclass’ of precision and restraint
As director Gavin O’Connor stood before the audience at the TCL Chinese Theater at Wednesday's premiere of The Accountant 2, the sequel to his 2016 cult favorite starring Ben Affleck , the filmmaker revealed that as in the film there was room alongside the gunplay, explosions and bone-crunching smackdowns, for a little heartfelt emotion.
“It's been a nine-year odyssey to arrive here this evening,” O’Connor told the crowd, referring to the ups and downs along the journey from the first film. O’Connor’s voice frequently broke as his praised his collaborators on the film, reserving particularly high acclaim for Affleck.
“Ben, I say this with gospel truth: Your performance is a masterclass,” O’Connor said of the leading man’s distinctively quirky take on the film’s autistic action hero. “It is a masterclass in precision. It is a masterclass in restraint. Ben was in a state of honesty every day in front of that camera, and it had nothing to do with words, because you don't act with words. You act with your soul, and Ben poured his into Christian's with honesty and truth every moment and every day. And I'm so grateful to you for that, Ben.”
Affleck bowed his head in gratitude as O’Conner pointed out that the Oscar winner’s innovative production company Artists Equity, which he founded alongside his longtime friend and fellow superstar Matt Damon and which offers it creative teams greater financial stake in its films’ successes than traditional Hollywood businesses, also shepherded The Accountant 2 to the screen. Also in attendance were Affleck's costars Jon Bernthal, J.K. Simmons, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Daniella Pineda.
“Ben has mapped out a resume rivaled by very few in our industry: he's an actor, he's a writer, he's a director, and now he's a studio head,” O’Connor noted. “I look at Artist Equity as an active rebellion against the establishment, and the movie is a representation of that. Any creative challenge a filmmaker may feel were non-existent working for Ben. ‘Stay on budget, make your days and Gavin, just go make the fucking movie.’”
“We all know the cliché: ‘The film is my baby and I have to hand it off to the studio now, and what if they fuck it up? What if they don't get it? How do I trust them?’” O’Connor said of Amazon’s increasingly robust rebuild of the century-old MGM shingle. “I've been doing this long enough to know if my movie's in good hands or if my movie's in bad hands. This movie's in really good hands, I wouldn't want my movie in anybody else's hands.”
The Accountant 2 is in theaters April 25.