By Any Means isn’t just another crime thriller. Director Elegance Bratton‘s historical drama transports audiences back to 1960s Mississippi, pairing pulse-pounding tension with a hard-hitting look at one of the darkest chapters of the civil rights era.
The film centers on the ideological and physical friction between two drastically different men forced into an uneasy alliance to solve the murder of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, played by Giancarlo Esposito.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays FBI Agent Wayne Strider, a Black man returning to his hometown determined to bring justice to a region where the Ku Klux Klan operates with near-total impunity. Strider embodies the structural tension of the era, wearing a federal badge in the Jim Crow South while tasked with upholding a legal system that often protects the very monsters he is hunting. He is a principled, by-the-book investigator whose deep moral compass is violently tested when local witnesses refuse to come forward due to the Klan’s relentless intimidation.
To break the silence, Strider’s superiors bring in Gregory Scarpa, played by Mark Wahlberg. Scarpa is a notorious mob enforcer turned FBI informant whose mafia-style tactics and willingness to operate entirely outside the law put him at direct odds with Strider. While Strider seeks a righteous conviction, Scarpa brings the brutal pragmatism of the underworld, terrorizing the Klan to extract the truth by any means necessary.
For Abdul-Mateen II, the role’s appeal came down to the evolution his character undergoes when forced to work alongside a ruthless hitman. “I was excited about, you know, playing a married man. I had a great opportunity to also transform in the movie,” he told The Quintessential Gentleman. “He started off one way and he ended up in a completely changed person.” He was equally drawn to the moral tension driving the story, describing his interest in the film’s themes of “justice and right and wrong” and just how far Strider would be pushed before compromising his values.
Wahlberg’s connection to the project ran deeper than the script alone. “I had flirted with the idea of playing Greg Scarpa in the past in a biopic. I never knew that this side of him existed,” he said. He credited Bratton’s vision for drawing serious talent but emphasized the need for a strong lead to ground Scarpa’s chaos.
“We needed somebody of Yaya’s caliber to really come in and carry the movie,” Wahlberg said, describing his own part as a “flashy role” that allowed him to channel his lifelong fascination with classic movie gangsters like Jimmy Cagney.
The explosive ideological clash between Strider and Scarpa eventually boils over into a standout physical fight inside a car. According to both actors, that intense chemistry developed naturally. Abdul-Mateen II described leaving egos at the door to “push each other,” a sentiment Wahlberg echoed. “The more I got to know him, the more I just became very fond of him,” Wahlberg shared, praising Abdul-Mateen II’s professionalism. “You’re only as good as the guy next to you, and we want everybody to be great, because we were much more concerned with the film as a whole versus our own individual performance.”
Ultimately, that shared commitment grounds the film’s intense action in real history. As Bratton himself noted in a separate interview, the true heart of the project remains the civil rights icon whose death sparks the investigation. “Vernon Dahmer is the moral center of this film,” Bratton said. “There’s no reason for it to exist if it’s not to honor his legacy.”
Check out the full interview. By Any Means is now playing in theaters.
