‘By Any Means’ Review: A True Crime Story That Never Trusts Its Own Weight

Mark Wahlberg and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II share the screen in ‘By Any Means,’ a period crime drama set in Mississippi in 1966 that pairs a young Black FBI agent with a mafia enforcer to investigate the murders of civil rights workers. Director Elegance Bratton follows up his acclaimed debut with a much bigger canvas this time, trading intimate character study for a sprawling, violent true crime tale rooted in one of the ugliest chapters of the civil rights era. The premise alone, a bureau agent forced to work alongside a mob hitman with his own brutal methods, promises a fascinating culture clash.

That promise carries the film through its opening stretch, which grounds viewers in the historical horror of Freedom Summer and the disappearance of civil rights workers with real weight and clarity. There is a seriousness to these early scenes that suggests ‘By Any Means’ might have something genuinely sharp to say about justice, complicity, and the limits of institutional power in the Jim Crow South.

Once the plot kicks into gear, though, the film starts leaning on shortcuts. Wahlberg plays Gregory Scarpa as a swaggering, almost theatrical presence, all bravado and blunt force, and the performance feels more like a familiar tough guy routine than a fully realized person. It is entertaining in short bursts, but it never quite convinces you that you are watching a real man capable of the violence the story keeps insisting he is capable of.

Abdul-Mateen fares much better as Agent Wayne Strider, carrying the emotional core of the film with a restraint that makes his gradual unraveling feel earned. When the story threatens his family, his performance shifts from procedural composure into something rawer and more desperate, and those scenes are where ‘By Any Means’ comes closest to justifying its own existence. Nicole Beharie, playing his wife, does a lot with limited screen time, and the supporting cast, including Josh Lucas and David Strathairn, fills out the world convincingly even when the script gives them little to chew on.

Visually, the film is handsome. The cinematography favors murky blues against scorched oranges, giving Mississippi a hazy, dangerous atmosphere that suits the material, and the score underlines the tension without ever overwhelming it. It is a shame the craft on display is in service of a screenplay that keeps flattening its most interesting ideas into simple good versus evil beats.

The central issue is tonal. ‘By Any Means’ wants to be a grounded reckoning with a shameful period of American history and a pulpy revenge thriller at the same time, and it never figures out how to fuse the two. The moments of stylized violence undercut the gravity of the history being depicted, while the historical weight keeps the pulpier stretches from ever feeling like true escapist fun. Neither mode gets to breathe, and the film ends up feeling both too cartoonish for its subject matter and too self serious for its genre thrills.

There is also a frustrating shallowness to how the story handles its true events. Real atrocities get compressed into plot machinery, and the film seems more interested in staging satisfying comeuppance than in actually interrogating why this uneasy alliance between the FBI and organized crime existed in the first place. It gestures at complexity without ever digging into it, which makes the whole enterprise feel less substantial than its subject deserves.

Taken as a whole, ‘By Any Means’ is a frustrating watch precisely because you can see the sharper, more urgent film buried somewhere inside it. Abdul-Mateen’s performance and the handsome craftsmanship keep it from being a total misfire, but Wahlberg’s cartoonish turn and the script’s refusal to sit with its own history hold it back from greatness. I am landing on 6 out of 10, a movie worth a matinee viewing for the strong central performance and striking visuals, but not one that lives up to the weight of the true story it is drawing from.

Have you seen ‘By Any Means’ yet, and do you agree with where I landed on it? Drop your take in the comments.