'By Any Means' Review: A Buddy Action Thriller With a Civil Rights Backdrop

Hollywood's tradition of mismatched buddy cop films gets a new entry with "By Any Means," a propulsive action thriller that drops its odd couple into the racial cauldron of the late-1960s American South. Directed by Elegance Bratton, the film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Wayne Strider, a young, by-the-book Black FBI agent from the South, and Mark Wahlberg as Gregory Scarpa, a cynical New York Mafia hitman with a toothpick permanently in his mouth.

The plot is rooted in a real historical tragedy: the 1966 firebombing murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr. Unable to solve the case through official channels, the FBI turns to Scarpa, a real-life informant, and lets him operate off the books. The Ku Klux Klan's influence reaches into local law enforcement, making Scarpa's brutal methods—baseball bats, guns, and bare-knuckle intimidation—the only apparent way to crack the case. "Nobody can know," the pair is warned.

Bratton and screenwriter Sascha Penn use this "based on true events" framework to explore the tension between order and vigilante justice. While Scarpa is a real figure, Strider is a composite creation, and Abdul-Mateen builds a complex, charismatic character from that fictional foundation. His arc moves from respectful, tucked-in agent to a man willing to chase cars and fire guns, mirroring the moral compromises the era demands.

Wahlberg's Scarpa is a fascinating alien in rural Mississippi, an Italian American slab of muscle who stands outside the racial divide. He is there to do a job, nothing more. But when asked how he would respond to such racial animus, he replies, "I'd kill them all, every last one of them." Strider, unimpressed, retorts that at least the Klan "believes in something." Their ideological clash erupts into a fistfight that pushes the film toward a bloody, somewhat over-the-top conclusion.

The supporting cast is strong, with Nicole Beharie as Strider's wife, LisaGay Hamilton as a key witness, and Giancarlo Esposito as Dahmer. The period details—pastel costumes, chrome-laden cars, and a soundtrack featuring Nina Simone, Ray Charles, and Curtis Mayfield—add texture. The film's central question—whether violence can ever be a corrective—lingers, even as the action veers into excess. "By Any Means" is a muscular, unvarnished thriller that introduces a memorable new cop pairing, even if it occasionally loses its grip on historical nuance.

"By Any Means" opens in theaters on September 4 and is rated R for violence and language. Running time: 107 minutes.