Director Elegance Bratton Says There's No Reason for 'By Any Means' to Exist If It's Not to Honor Vernon Dahmer's Legacy

Director Elegance Bratton‘s By Any Means hits theaters tomorrow, a historical crime thriller that pairs Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg as unlikely partners investigating one of the darkest chapters of the civil rights era.

The film follows Special Agent Wayne Strider, played by Abdul-Mateen II, as he returns to his hometown in Mississippi hoping to bring justice to a region where the Klan operates with near-total impunity. After civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, played by Giancarlo Esposito, is murdered, the FBI finds no one willing to testify against the Klan, forcing Strider’s superiors to bring in hitman-turned-FBI-informant Gregory Scarpa, played by Wahlberg, to force answers out of the men responsible.

“When I read the script, it just grabbed me by the throat, took me on a journey, took no prisoners, made no apologies,” Bratton shared during our exclusive interview, adding that above all else, he wanted to make “a movie that moves, just a movie that you can just have a good-ass time” watching. That instinct shaped his entire approach to tone, mixing real history with the pacing and energy of pure entertainment.

Stylistically, Bratton pulled from a specific lineage of crime filmmaking. He described the script hitting him “like a noir film, particularly Hong Kong noir, and the work of John Woo,” pointing to the way violence functions as character development in Woo’s films rather than a pause in the story. He also cited Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas as an influence on how the film handles “criminal psychology and the way that these gangsters become family, an unusual family,” a dynamic he saw mirrored in Strider and Scarpa’s uneasy partnership.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds factored in as well, particularly its tension around whether a story is ultimately about revenge or justice. “It’s kind of a little bit of both,” Bratton said, describing that same ambiguity as central to By Any Means.

The most personal part of the conversation centered on how Bratton approached depicting Vernon Dahmer, the real-life NAACP leader whose murder anchors the film’s plot. Dahmer was a self-made businessman who ran his local NAACP chapter and famously offered to personally cover the poll tax for any Black citizen who wanted to vote but couldn’t afford to pay it, a stance that ultimately cost him his life when his home was firebombed by Klansmen.

Bratton was clear that honoring Dahmer’s legacy wasn’t optional. “Vernon Dahmer is the moral center of this film,” he said. “There’s no reason for it to exist if it’s not to honor his legacy.” He described extensive research with Dahmer’s family, including conversations with Betty Dahmer, who was a young girl in the house the night it was burned down, and Ellie Dahmer, Vernon’s widow.

That research shaped how Bratton chose to depict the violence itself. Rather than center the camera on the Klan, he wanted the audience to feel what the Dahmer family experienced.

“These guys were hiding in the shadows with hoods on their heads,” Bratton said. “So what is it to be a good family that’s woken up in the dead of night, the people too afraid to show their faces? I wanted to be inside of it, rather than create, this isn’t about watching the Klan commit violence, this is about what is it like to be surrounded by violence that refuses to show its face.”

By Any Means hits theaters September 4. Check out the full interview below.