By Any Means beats on Klansmen but can't beat its own tired thriller script

Bratton broke out with the documentary Pier Kids and since directed The Inspection and Move Ya Body: The Birth Of House, all of which clearly came from a place of love and personal experience. By Any Means strikes a noticeably different tone. There’s almost no warmth in this film; as soon as the movie opens, newsreels cover the tragic murder of three activists, while Gregory is hard at work uncapping a man’s knee with a baseball bat. The brutality extends to language, as Bratton and writer Sascha Penn seek to capture the virulently racist era. But By Any Means merely makes its belabored point over and over again. 

Penn, who revisited the riots after the Rodney King verdict when he co-wrote 1992, wrestles with the moral murkiness of his 1966-set premise. Wayne is clearly uncomfortable with the way the FBI has elected to handle the case, but seeing as he’s getting nowhere fast otherwise, he learns to embrace Gregory’s propensity for punching out their targets. By Any Means somewhat borrows the dynamic of the two main characters from Green Book—an educated, proud Black man and an Italian American working man—with a slight twist. Not only are the two men learning to get along—and maybe the white character will learn to be slightly less racist, but that is only a vague “maybe”—but this time, the Black man also gets in on the violence. That doesn’t exactly feel like progress, especially when Wayne endures so many slurs and racist jokes, like Gregory constantly calling him Jackie (as in Jackie Robinson), even after Wayne explains that he is far from the first Black agent in the FBI. 

Wahlberg, who looks like he’s holding Michael Shannon’s barber hostage, cannot disappear into the role of an Italian American from deep Brooklyn with his bad prosthetic nose and even flimsier accent. Boston is no Bensonhurst. It’s also curious that Wahlberg, who has his own history of violent racism, would be interested in making a Civil Rights movie that posits a white mafioso as the only one who can get the job done. Meanwhile, Abdul-Mateen is champing at the bit to make a meal out of this meager movie, out-acting Marky Mark’s tough-guy schtick in every scene. His character is the film’s conflicted moral compass, and his journey into the less savory side of justice is an intriguing one. At least Abdul-Mateen shares a number of tender scenes with Nicole Beharie, while an all-too-brief appearance from Giancarlo Esposito and David Strathairn, clocking in as the quintessential FBI middle manager, bolster the ensemble.

Salvaging a “based on a true story” project this inherently messy would take a far more nuanced hand than has been applied to By Any Means. Bratton uses the film to prove he has the big-budget chops to handle movie stars, and Abdul-Mateen plays out each of his character’s conflicted feelings with nuance, but they’re both overshadowed by the antics of Wahlberg’s dead-eyed antihero. The movie wants to tackle the realities of fighting violence with violence, but in the end, it’s a violent white man who takes up all its space. 

Director: Elegance Bratton
Writers: Sascha Penn
Starring: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie, Giancarlo Esposito, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas, Ethan Embry
Release Date: September 4, 2026