The Accountant 2

Director Gavin O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque reunite for this critically acclaimed sequel to 2016’s The Accountant. Ben Affleck reprises his role as the calculative (literally!) Christian Wolff, who can solve any problem, mathematical or otherwise. But something is not adding up in his latest case, involving his old acquaintance, Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), and his protege, Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson).

Christian must work with his estranged and equally lethal brother, Brax (Jon Bernthal), who’s also a hitman, to get even with a web of killers who will stop at nothing to eliminate them. The odd couple might be a deadly dynamic duo, but they’re also pretty funny outside of all the bad-guy-killing. Come for the action, stay for the buddy comedy.

Mickey 17

If you’re a fan of Robert Pattinson, you’ll get more of him than you bargained for in this sci-fi dark comedy.

Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, who signs up to be an ‘expendable’ on a spacefaring colonisation expedition. Mickey is subjected to dangerous conditions as a guinea pig for the colonists, repeatedly dies, and is ‘reprinted’. Things get out of hand when Mickey 18 gets printed while Mickey 17 is still alive, as only one expendable is supposed to exist at a time. Now, both Mickeys risk being eliminated altogether. They must overcome their initial hostility towards each other to work together and fight back against the megalomaniacal politician Kenneth Marshall’s (Mark Ruffalo) control.

Mickey 17 is adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel, Mickey7 (“I kill [Mickey] 10 more times,” quips writer-director Bong Joon-ho). Bong, the highly acclaimed director of Parasite, Snowpiercer, Okja, and Memories of Murder, explores his signature theme of class inequality against a big-budget, sci-fi action backdrop.

The Amateur

Rami Malek, known for playing hacker Elliot Alderson in Mr. Robot and rock star Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, might not be the name that springs to mind when one mentions “action hero”. Don’t count him out, though. Here, Malek stars as a man whom his enemies underestimate at their own peril.

Malek plays Charlie Heller, a brilliant cryptographer at the CIA. When his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), is taken hostage and killed in a terror attack in London, he becomes preoccupied with vengeance. Charlie blackmails his superior, Deputy Director Alex Moore (Holt McCallany), so he can be trained as a field agent. He is subsequently mentored by Colonel Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), who doubts that Charlie possesses the killer instinct to make him an effective operative. With the aid of a mysterious contact known only as ‘Inquiline’, Charlie tracks down the terrorists responsible for his wife’s death.

The Amateur is the second film adaptation of Robert Littell’s 1981 novel of the same name, giving the story a high-tech sheen while retaining its tension and intrigue.