By Any Means (United States, 2026)

When making a movie, having a goal is not the same as achieving it. I can see what director Elegance Bratton and screenwriter Sascha Penn are aiming for with By Any Means: melding a traditional revenge-thriller narrative (in the Point Blank mode) with history-based Jim Crow-era racism. The two aren't necessarily incompatible, but it's an incredibly thin tightrope to walk, and this film doesn't make it to the far end. The main problems are structural. Although the narrative makes the switch to the dark side credible, the ending is anticlimactic and unsatisfying. The film never provides a central villain to direct the evils of the henchmen. As a result, the movie concludes with the nagging feeling that something critical is missing. When I realized the end credits were about to roll and there wasn't another act to follow, I was genuinely irritated.

The film presents a heavily fictionalized version of events from 1966 surrounding the murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer (Giancarlo Esposito). Following a prologue set two years earlier that introduces elite mafia hitman Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg), the story shifts to the night the KKK firebomb Dahmer's house. FBI agent Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), one of only a handful of Black federal agents in the South, shows interest in assisting with the investigation, but the local boss (David Strathairn) initially refuses. Once the decision is made to bring in Scarpa—who occasionally takes on off-the-books, no-rules jobs for the FBI—Strider is appointed as his "handler." Strider is initially horrified by Scarpa's uncompromising brutality (such as killing a racist cop during a traffic stop), but circumstances gradually push him to accept the hitman's "by any means" creed.

Although many details surrounding Scarpa are accurate (or at least as accurate as can be gleaned from a heavily sanitized version of "official" events), Strider is an almost completely fictional character based on a vague historical reference. All of his specifics, including his background, his relationships, and especially his character arc (from law-abiding agent to rogue maverick), are spun entirely out of whole cloth by the filmmakers.

There's a distinct Lethal Weapon vibe to the proceedings. Like Murtaugh and Riggs in the 1987 film, the pairing features an unstable White man and a law-and-order Black man. Strider's gradual shift toward Scarpa's worldview is reminiscent of how Murtaugh accepted the influence of Riggs. However, where a genuine bond formed between the protagonists in Richard Donner's classic thriller, there is little evidence of any true companionship developing in By Any Means. Despite hinting at a "buddy cop" trajectory, the film fails to deliver on that promise. A sense of understanding, or at least mutual respect, would have made Strider's transformation feel less abrupt.

Whether Wahlberg is actively channeling Mel Gibson or not, he seems to be having fun playing a character given carte blanche to do what he does best. Scarpa is an amoral killer and a respected member of a New York crime family whose association with the FBI has rendered him untouchable. Wahlberg plays the role to the hilt, never softening Scarpa's rough edges while still conveying that the man operates by a strict internal code. (A short scene at the family dinner table does a lot of heavy lifting here.) Abdul-Mateen has a rather thankless job; although the story is mostly told from his perspective, Strider spends too much of the running time lingering in Scarpa's shadow. He only becomes a truly interesting character late in the narrative.

The filmmakers' attempts to blend historical events with thriller tropes and a message about the horrors of 1960s Southern racism result in an uneven production. The way the narrative trajectory fizzles—aborting momentum in favor of a series of clean text cards to wrap things up—causes the movie to largely fail as a conventional thriller, even if its depiction of the KKK's tactics proves as disturbing as Bratton intended. Dumped into theaters during one of the year's least productive weekends, By Any Means seems destined to be quickly forgotten.

By Any Means (United States, 2026)