In theaters this weekend: A 1950s romantic drama and ‘The Accountant 2’

One is an action movie starring Ben Affleck; the other is a lush 1950s romantic drama. Together, they had our critic thinking about math and geometry. Take your pick or catch up on the spring’s hits this weekend in cinemas.

The Accountant 2

In theaters Friday

To the list of sequels no one was asking for, add this brutal tale of broken bones and brotherly love. The original explored the life of Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), a person with autism who’d found his unlikely calling as a money-laundering expert with criminal organizations. Mayhem ensued, especially when the film brought Christian, who was accomplished at martial arts, together with his estranged, assassin-for-hire brother Brax (Jon Bernthal).

The new film picks up eight years later, apparently because director Gavin O’Connor has belatedly realized how much comedy he can make of that estrangement. The complicated, largely nonsensical plot involves a Salvadoran family caught in the margins of a society that profits from the desperation of immigrants without legal status. But that’s not a lot of fun, even when heads are being bashed, so Christian speed-dates, and Brax tries to adopt a dog, and they team up for a night of line-dancing at a country bar. The title, as rendered on-screen, is actually The Accountant² — and if this one does as well at the box office as its predecessor, there’s presumably a cubed Accountant in our future.

On Swift Horses

In theaters Friday

It’s Christmas eve in the early 1950s, and Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is making love to Lee (Will Poulter) a soldier on leave from Korea, when Lee’s handsome brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) shows up at her family home. “The two people I love most,” says Lee, who wants them all to live together in suburban San Diego. There’s a vibe there that Muriel can’t put her finger on; she marries Lee and believes Julius when he says he’ll join them as Lee pursues the American dream. Life doesn’t quite work out that way in this sumptuously filmed adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel. It’s not quite a love-triangle — more a love-pentagon maybe, though the geometry of queer desire in the ’50s was rarely that neat. Trusting, reliable Lee plays it straight in every conceivable sense, while both Julius and Muriel are gamblers at heart – he with cards, she with horses, and both with love.

That brings different kinds of danger to all their lives when a gay Vegas card sharp of boundless ambition (Diego Calva), and a woman living openly as a lesbian (Sasha Calle), open up the two people Lee loves most to other possibilities. Filmmaker Daniel Minahan, whose small-screen work includes episodes of Six Feet Under and Fellow Travelers, makes the most of a wider canvas, depicting a time when American space and abundance seemed limitless, but emotions were held close.