Directed By Elegance Bratton

Starring – Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie

The Plot – A notorious mafia hitman (Wahlberg) and a young Black FBI agent (Abdul-Mateen II) team up to investigate the murders of civil rights leaders in 1966 Mississippi.

Rated R for violence/bloody images and pervasive language.

By Any Means | Official Trailer (2026 Movie) – Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg

POSITIVES

If a factually accurate beat-for-beat accounting is what you seek out of this based on a true story narrative, then By Any Means might ultimately disappoint, however for those encouraged by a gritty civil rights crime drama and a pull-no-punches kind of direction that effectively blurs the line between Hollywood fantasy and reality, there’s enough entertainment value to Bratton’s film to make it a compelling late-summer addition to the cinematic calendar, offering a more than serviceable follow-up for him to 2022’s The Inspection. What’s most remarkable about Bratton’s distinguishing direction here is how he effectively materializes authenticity not only in the immersive air of his period piece setting, with ample attention to detail in everything from the lighting, wardrobe choices, Terence Blanchard’s swoon-worthy jazz score, and collection of automobiles in the sturdy production values breeding an atmospherically ambient and textural tangibility to the familiarity of Mississippi, but also this thickly enveloping air of inescapable racism that makes it feel like an airborne toxic ingredient of paranoia among the everyday lives of its vulnerably frightened African-American citizens, providing a more than frustrating justification for its lawfully conflicted characters to eventually take vigilante justice in their own hands. This is especially the case for Abdul-Mateen II’s Wayne Strider, a by-the-books kind of lawman who seeks to be the welcome change that he wishes to see in a world continuously driven by fear and violence, but also towards the many societal peers of secondary characters who help flesh out a sense of connective community among the silent minority, where Bratton and screenwriter Sascha Penn spend ample time among the movie’s 102-minute engagement to flesh out corresponding dynamics that give us a deeper sense of knowledgeable understanding within their decorated psychologies. It allows supporting actors like Nicole Beharie, Giancarlo Esposito, and Lachanze the necessary time to certainly steal a scene or two away from its commanding duo, with earnestly sincere interactions that provide a contrasting comfort of clarity to so much of the tensely riveting and vitriolically violent moments of the movie’s memorability, and while reluctance mostly falls in the hands of Wayne, as a result of spending so much first-hand experience with the aggressively offensive Greg, there’s still a conveyance of conscience that permeates within the nearly unrecognizable transformation of his character, allowing the script to tap into some thought-provoking questions pertaining to morality that aren’t meant to be resolved in such a tiny introspective scope of America’s darkest history. When the violence does take hold of Bratton’s captivating intentions, it’s unapologetically inserted as this loudly abrasive and undeniably persistent influence that changes the complexion of the interrogations every bit as much as it does the tangibility of the tone, and though it would be easy for audiences to label the film as unnecessarily violent, the reality is that Greg’s unrelenting but never gruesome actions serve as the proof in the proverbial pudding towards finally attaining impactful resolution for its community, with attention-stealing merits in the movie’s bold sound design conveying a more than hefty price range for those threatened to either confess or face a grisly consequence to their own racially supercharged actions. In between these dispersed punishments, the appeal of the script is maintained by the psychological weight unloaded between Wayne and Greg’s ice-breaking dynamic, where many of the clashing interactions between them elicits this buddy cop dynamic to the clashing of their combustible ideals, that surprisingly surmised more pallet-cleansing laughter than I could’ve ever expected in a story with such hefty and haunting thematic material. Part of the irresistible charm of these characters certainly stems from the confrontational chemistry of these two constantly exerting their moral convictions to the other, with the performances of each eliciting this commanding screen presence that captivates even under the undesirable moments of their character designs, however the weaponized psychology of their dialogue-driven interactions can’t be overlooked or undervalued to the integrity of the experience, especially from Greg’s matter-of-fact projected resolutions to everyday racism, which conveys the ignorance of his inexperience by undervaluing something so inescapably horrific for so many people. It’s a slippery slope for Wahlberg to walk, as a lack of empathetic compassion and abundance of amorality could come across as unappealing to certain audiences under the right framing, however Wahlberg lends an effortlessly subdued cool factor to the character that emphasizes his deliveries with astute conviction, helping to override some horrendous visual choices and inconsistency in accent, which threaten the kind of performance that feels deliberately responsible for how audiences respond to this movie. As for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, while Wahlberg’s scenery-chewing turn designates him as the movie’s dependable straight man, Yahya’s grounded and deeply internalized performance capably carries the slow-burn psychological weight of the film, especially during those tensely uncomfortable moments where he’s confronted with the stereotypical observations about what people perceive law authorities in the Jim Crow south to be. In such, Abdul-Mateen II imbeds an emasculating anxiety that feels palpably resonant without the overly dramatics of commanding intentions, and considering so much of the case feels personal to his character, the means of his justifiable evolution feel more than believably realized in Yahya’s subtly enacted deviations, bringing forth a third act transformation that emotionally makes him feel unrecognizable from everything we’ve previously experienced alongside him.

NEGATIVES

While much of Bratton’s distinguished direction finds a comfortable consistency towards cohesively mediating the material, there are admittedly some inescapably jarring tonal shifts throughout the blossoming partnership of Wayne and Greg, where perhaps the utilization of too much comedy underwhelms the atmospheric authenticity and historical accuracy of those involved. As previously assessed, while the movie isn’t necessarily concerned with remarkable accuracy, there is an unappealing buddy cop factor to the framing of the material that makes this feel like 48 Hours if it pertained to something as socially significant as the death of Martin Luther King, and between these shifts and some naturally uncomfortable moments that are unpursued and regretfully undissected, such as those involving Wayne driving a backseat Greg, or even Greg announcing laughingly to a black-owned diner that he prefers black coffee, there is a bit of an irresponsible awareness that has it occasionally feeling like white savior movies, like Green Book, where instead of addressing racism head-on, it tiptoes around it by trivializing racism for a character who has never deliberately experienced it. All tonal shifts and uncomfortable moments aside, the film’s more action-oriented sequences are also dramatically underscored, as Bratton struggles with the technically with components that drive a scene’s intensity, such as first-person POV perspective shots, or fist fights that feel devoid of any palpable tension. It’s certainly admirable that Bratton is looking to expand upon his directorial capabilities, however his inexperience in the action genre grounds these sequences unappealingly in the most condemning ways, where stylistic impulses oversaturate the integrity of what’s captured, and considering even the film’s climax chase sequence is squandered by indecipherable editing techniques and an overreliance upon Blanchard’s aforementioned score drowning out the long winds and echoed footsteps of the pursuit, cementing such a flat exclamation to the most rewarding moments for audience patience. The production is also responsible for the unintentional laughter continuously elicited from the year’s single worst prosthetic nose design, which is utilized here to allow Wahlberg to disappear seamlessly into his role. Because it’s so stand-out enormous from anything else on his face, and considering that the movie relies upon a limitless amount of facial registry reactive shots, there’s a distractive emphasis to the visuals that immediately takes focus and attention into everything that we’re tasked to candidly interpret, and while it does nothing to the integrity of the material, and little to the experience, it does leave Wahlberg’s performance feeling a bit undermined by unnecessary design concepts that stand out in the most unsubtle of ways, helping to pad out so many more laughs than the material could ever conjure. Finally, even the ending itself is a bit problematic, as the conveniently abrupt resolution makes the film feel like it ran out of story before it ran out of film, leading to the kind of on-screen text that fills in the gaps of some of the more fascinating aspects of Wayne and Greg’s lives. It’s strange and underwhelming enough that the final conflict doesn’t even involve the movie’s primary antagonist (Ethan Embry), but it’s even worse when a lack of situational struggle never evokes adaptability or resiliency from the traits of our established protagonists, leaving little in the way of dramatic underlining to a sequence’s integrity, and instead tying up matters in a neat and tidy bow for the digestibility of an impatient audience.

OVERALL
By Any Means ultimately makes up for in commanding performances and mesmerizing direction what it lacks in historical factual accuracy, surmising a grimly evocative but tonally uneven finished product that slips seamlessly into the forgettable confines of post-summer cinema with nearly all of its integrity intact. Despite the film’s abrupt and unfulfilling resolution, the confrontational chemistry of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg feel more than indulging of their inescapable buddy cop dynamic, and with lots of soul to both the material and the characters who candidly dissect it, Elegance Bratton fearlessly delves into a dark and tenderly vulnerable angle of this country’s regrettable history, demanding us to learn from our past actions before we repeat them.

My Grade: 6.5 or C