R | 1h 47m | Crime Drama| 2026
It coulda been a contenduh, but “By Any Means” is an almost-blaxploitation version of 1988’s “Mississippi Burning,” mashed together with “The Sopranos” and a B-movie buddy-cop film.
It intends to be as much of a sober-eyed historical race drama as “Mississippi Burning,” but wears its schadenfreude too obviously on its sleeve. It delights way too much in the—admittedly rather fun—concept of a mobbed-up Noo Yawk goombah whacking Southern Klansmen’s knees with a baseball bat, much like the Mafia-versus-bikers bar-fight scene in Chazz Palminteri’s 1993 “A Bronx Tale.”
The Players
It’s 1966, and Vernon Dahmer, an NAACP chapter president (Giancarlo Esposito), has been murdered in cold blood by the KKK. They burn a cross on his front lawn and then his house, with him in it.
Gregory Scarpa, Jr. (Mark Wahlberg) is a New York mafioso goon. In real life, he was known as the “Grim Reaper” and apparently killed 60 people during his hitman career. Behind the scenes, he was an FBI informant and the enforcer the FBI sent down to Mississippi to assist in the investigation of a series of civil rights workers’ murders. Like Gene Hackman’s world-weary, savvy agent in “Mississippi Burning,” Scarpa knows fighting fire with fire is the only way to get the Klan’s attention.
In this telling, while Scarpa has no love for “moolies”—as in “moolinyan,” as in “eggplants,” as in black people—he respects Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” approach to African-American freedom, as opposed to the peace-loving principles of Martin Luther King, Jr. He’s the bad cop.
As the good cop, or rather, classically justice-seeking protagonist, Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), is a fresh-out-of-the-academy FBI G-man recently moved back down to his home state of Mississippi from Chicago. His cosmopolitan wife, Allison (Nicole Beharie), is in tow.
“I believe in justice,” he informs his immediate superiors (David Strathairn, Josh Lucas) when asked why he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He believes it’s high time black people had a seat at the justice table. He’s principled, upright, and uptight—just like Willem Dafoe’s FBI agent Alan Ward in “Mississippi Burning.” Agent Strider has a copy of Martin Luther King’s “Why We Can’t Wait” in his glove compartment.
Oil and Water
So naturally, when his lot is thrown in with Scarpa, as an FBI “special investigator,” it’s immediately “The Odd Couple.” “By Any Means” has all the ingredients of of buddy-cop movie and could have easily been only that. Mateen does a pretty hilarious slow-burn to Wahlberg’s antics.
Wahlberg plays Scarpa as cliche as possible—thick Brooklyn accent, wife-beaters, beer-belly, pouffy comb-over, high-waisted 1960s polyester pants, aviator shades, and a fake nose that’s a seriously bad job by the hair and makeup department. Who hired the prosthetics guy?
Setting this kind of guy loose on the Klan is, as mentioned, fun. But the main message, similar to “Green Book,” is about a pragmatic Italian mobster schooling an upstanding but naive black man that working within the system doesn’t work. Justice can only be achieved by “enhanced interrogation” methods. When Strider asks Scarpa what he’d do if he were black, Scarpa matter-of-factly states, “I’d kill ’em all.”
Mateen keeps this whole thing from falling apart. He’s a man driven to the brink by the inhuman horrors he sees, both from the Klan as well as Scarpa. Director Bratton appears to be less interested in Strider’s principles as a man of peace and justice, than he is in Scarpa’s more satisfying, literal whackjob approach.
Between Wahlberg’s toothpick acting, cartoonishly bad hair, and the Jim Brown-look-alike Mateen appearing to be in some kind of Civil Rights version of a Shakespearian tragedy, it’s slightly never-the-twain-shall-meet. A full-on, Tarantino-like, 1970s blaxploitation approach would have been a lot more satisfying.
For the real meat and potatoes version of this story, skip “By Any Means” and watch the now-classic “Mississippi Burning.”
‘By Any Means’
Director: Elegance Bratton
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas, Nicole Beharie
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 4, 2026
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
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