September 3, 2026 · Watch the official trailer
Taking the law into your own hands for justice is a relatively common motif in cinema, as filmmakers find fertile ground for intriguing narratives and characters in the world of vigilantism. This concept of what happens when diplomacy fails, or doesn’t get the desired results, is easily translated into a modern context, shining a light on the ambiguity of morality when seeking the greater good.
Loosely based on a true story, the crime thriller “By Any Means,” from director Elegance Bratton, is the latest to explore the gray areas between good and evil, pairing an altruistic African American FBI agent with a New York mob hitman as the duo ruthlessly investigate the murder of Mississippi civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer in the 1960s.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as FBI Special Agent Wayne Strider, who returns to his home state of Mississippi after years on the job in Chicago. Struggling to find his place as law enforcement in a place and time where his skin color makes him largely persona non grata among the white community he lives among, Abdul-Mateen’s bullish performance as Strider is meticulously by the books, though it’s clear at times that Strider thinks himself an Eliot Ness for the South.
The reluctance Strider shows in bending the law for civic justice is layered throughout Abdul-Mateen’s physical and emotional work, and it’s clear that the conflict between doing things by the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law weighs heavily on him. Sascha Penn’s screenplay, which is often too on the nose about these moral dilemmas, envelops the argument in a discussion of the different worldviews of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Though this is largely done superficially in the film’s first half, it is mostly left by the wayside for the more straightforward, formulaic elements of the crime genre.
Stronger films with similar observations on law enforcement and morality during highly politicized, racially combative moments in American history, such as Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” or Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah,” explore these themes with both richer storytelling and more intricate, nuanced dialogue. Oftentimes, “By Any Means” feels like what would happen if a script were equal parts “Green Book” and “Lethal Weapon.”
Mark Wahlberg dons a comically ridiculous prosthetic nose to play Gregory Scarpa, a no-nonsense hitman from New York with a Boston accent that reminds everyone just how clearly Wahlberg is playing the character rather than being enveloped by him.
While Abdul-Mateen considers the weight of every decision Strider makes, Scarpa has far less compunction about questioning what he’s doing, with Wahlberg simply acting as a blunt weapon. This puts Wahlberg in incredibly familiar territory and somewhat lessens the opposite-sides-of-the-same-coin aesthetic Bratton and the filmmaking team had in mind for a cop-and-hitman duo crime thriller.
The supporting cast, including solid character actors like David Strathairn, Nicole Beharie and Josh Lucas, largely washes into a muddled background in favor of Abdul-Mateen and Wahlberg. Bratton rarely treats them as anything more than accessories to further the narrative rather than needed pieces of world-building.
When it comes to the film’s vigilante motif, Bratton rarely shies away from the inherent violence in “By Any Means,” opening with a sequence that sees Wahlberg’s Scarpa violently bloody and torture a man for information, which leads to the burial site of three civil rights activists in 1964. The screenplay attempts to make Scarpa’s mobbed-up outlaw feel like the dark hand of justice in an almost traditional Western, “Man with No Name”-style vengeance story. But the cinematic parallels don’t necessarily match the underwhelming broad brushstrokes the screenplay attempts to provide.
Visually, Bratton’s second feature takes deliberate chances to evoke both period crime drama and the visual style of Spike Lee. It’s quite jarring, though, to see an action sequence move from third person to an almost ‘Call of Duty’-style first-person shooter within the same sequence, leaving audiences looking down the barrel of a gun pointed blindly into the night.
Bratton and cinematographer Ante Cheng attempt, and largely succeed, in making the world of Mississippi feel like a visual character within the narrative. Although the bright, shining visuals that are a cinematic highlight during the day muddy into deep, ugly shades of black at night that obscure a bit too much of what’s going on in scenes.
As a whole, “By Any Means” is a mid-tier crime thriller being released with little marketing over Labor Day weekend. And while some audiences may want to catch a movie in theaters over the extended holiday, “By Any Means” is better left for a casual at-home streaming audience later this year.
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