Directed by Gavin O’Connor | Written by Bill Dubuque | 132 min | ▲▲▲1/2

The arrival of a sequel to the 2016 Ben Affleck actioner prompted me to go back and watch the nine-year-old original again.  I think I might’ve been a little too hard on The Accountant in my review. It was more entertaining than I gave it credit for back then. It could be that I’ve warmed on how Affleck has chosen to stretch his talent since then, or maybe there’s just fewer star-driven, theatrical action vehicles than there used to be — unless your name is Neeson, Statham, or Butler — so there’s some retroactive novelty in his tale of an autistic numbers man who moonlights as a killer for organized crime — but he really has a good heart.

The sequel is no less silly. It’s actually more so, but it’s burnished in a welcome sheen of comedic writing, which leavens the stuff we’re supposed to take seriously. Full marks to the filmmakers for delivering a sequel later that nobody was asking for and making it more fun than the original.

It opens with Chris Wolff (Affleck, starting to grizzle) having hacked a speed dating event, with women lining up to meet him. Unfortunately, he’s way to awkward and self-conscious to appeal to any of them. Then we meet up again with former Treasury chief Ray King (JK Simmons), now a private investigator after he retired from the government. He’s connecting with a femme fatale in a bar while working on a case, and soon they’re surrounded by goons. She’ll get away easily, but he won’t.

Cue Cynthia Addai-Robinson, also returning as Marybeth Medina investigating the murder of her former boss, and that brings Chris in, along with his brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal). (Disappointed not to see Alison Wright return as Justine — instead essayed by Allison Robertson.)  It’s a little unclear who the antagonist is here beyond a craggy pimp and trafficker who vanishes for big chunks of the movie.

But that’s fine, because as the plot burbles away underneath we get a lot of time to hang out with the brothers, who are the main draw. What we have here is a buddy movie, chalk and cheese characters struggling to get along, with Affleck even going as far to bring in a squeaky-voiced stiffness that wasn’t a part of his Wolff the last time — but it works.

Bernthal is both a bro and a brother. His outward face to the world is very different than Chris’, but they’re both lonely. Good thing they have each other. A mid-movie line-dancing sequence in an LA cowboy bar is a genuine pleasure — there’s nothing like 10 gallon hats to remind us this is a robust throwback to right-wing entertainment of the past. The armed vigilante is the hero because he only kills the really bad people, breaking rules lawmakers must abide. I won’t lie, there’s something almost wholesome in the transparent, conservative values of this kind of entertainment.

And I’ll tell you why: The particular evil of the baddies in this adds resonance the filmmakers couldn’t have predicted — migrant children separated from their parents, all of whom fall victim to the worst kind of predators. Hard to watch without thinking, “Yeah, sure, but now that’s ICE.”