By Any Means is a true-crime drama from director Elegance Bratton about Gregory Scarpa Jr., a New York mafia hitman known as the “Grim Reaper” who also worked as an FBI informant and was sent to Mississippi in 1966 to help solve the murder of civil rights workers. If you like violent, character-driven crime stories and want to see Mark Wahlberg let loose, this one is for you. If you want a clean, sober historical race drama, or a nonstop action ride, it will frustrate you.
The film sits uncomfortably between exploitation picture and serious historical drama, and it never fully commits to either. I understand why: the real story is baffling enough to tempt any filmmaker into something deeper. But reaching for depth and grabbing air are two different things.
Plot. Scarpa is dragged back to Mississippi as a “special investigator” after an NAACP chapter president (Giancarlo Esposito) is murdered by Klansmen who burn a cross and his house. He is paired with Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a principled young FBI agent who has returned to his home state and carries a copy of MLK’s Why We Can’t Wait in his car.
In Sascha Penn’s script, Scarpa has no love for Black people but respects Malcolm X’s winner-take-all attitude more than Martin Luther King Jr.’s pacifism, and he borrows the phrase “by any means” from Malcolm. It’s a strong setup for a buddy-cop clash. The film just doesn’t lean into it. And it starts slow. After a jolt of an opening, with Scarpa swinging a bat at a Klan witness’s knees, the movie sags for a long stretch before it finds its footing.
Acting. Mark Wahlberg played Scarpa perfectly. Muscle-hugging A-shirts, high-waisted ’60s slacks, a feathered hairdo, flashy shades he wears everywhere and a prosthetic nose give him a swagger that is part The Departed and part cartoon. He is a foul-mouthed goombah who clearly relishes violence, and Wahlberg commits to every ridiculous detail. When he’s let loose on white supremacists, the film is at its most fun, and the audience gets to enjoy watching bad guys get clobbered.
Abdul-Mateen is the glue that keeps the movie from coming apart. He sells a man pushed to the brink by what he sees, both from the Klan and from his partner, and he sells the discomfort of returning to a hometown he left for safety. The script gives him far less than he deserves. Nicole Beharie does solid work with very little, and the women in this film are underwritten across the board. Strathairn and Josh Lucas play the superiors.
Directing. Bratton, whose previous film was The Inspection, works best with stories about Black men struggling inside institutions that don’t suit them, and you can feel that here. His approach is austere and downbeat, and Ante Cheng’s cinematography, all moody blues and brimstone oranges, looks beautiful. But the grim tone bumps hard against Wahlberg’s over-the-top performance, and Terence Blanchard’s mournful, tense horns playing over a man mugging in a bad wig and a fake nose make for a tough mix. It’s not a failure of the actor. The direction never decides which movie it is making.
Stunts and fight choreography. The violence here is raw, not choreographed: baseball bats, pistol-whippings and beatings that hit hard because they feel ugly and personal. It’s not an action showcase, but the brutality delivers a kick when the film finally lets Scarpa off the leash.
What failed and why. The tone. The film gestures at the ethics of state-sanctioned overreach but never develops them, and it clearly cares more about Scarpa’s satisfying brutality than about Strider’s principles. The central argument, that justice only comes through brute force, is left lopsided, and Strider ends up looking naive instead of being a true counterweight. There is also an echo of Green Book in the dynamic, with the hard-nosed Italian mobster schooling an upstanding Black man on the folly of respectability politics. It lands better here, but it’s still uneasy. The script wants nuance and delivers a slogan.
Best moments. The bat scene that opens the film, nearly everything Wahlberg does as Scarpa, and the middle stretch, where the investigation gets traction, the two leads finally clash, and the movie finds its energy.
Impact. By Any Means is a flawed, uneven film with one great performance at its center. Wahlberg proves he can disappear into a loud, dangerous character, and Abdul-Mateen proves he can hold the screen against him. It doesn’t solve its tonal problem, but when it finally commits to the grit in the middle, it works.
Verdict. A slow start, a muddled message and a perfect Wahlberg. This one may have earned the punch, if you can wait for the middle to land.
