1/2
USA 2026
Opening October 29, 2026
Directed by: Elegance Bratton
Writing credits: Sascha Penn
Principal actors: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, LisaGay
Hamilton, LaChanze
Director Elegance Bratton sets the penetrating film’s tone with the lead-in sequence: 1960s archival news footage of the turmoil the United States was embroiled in over the civil rights movement. Camelot is shattered; the country is mired in and divided over a foreign war, and ending segregation. President Lyndon B. Johnson is determined, despite Southern states’ strong and deadly resistance. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed into law the historic landmark U.S. federal Voting Rights Act. Grounded in real events, By Any Means accurately portrays the raw feelings, bitter talk, and inhumane activities taking place.
The nation was shocked in 1964 by three young men disappearance and gruesome deaths while registering the Negroes to vote in Mississippi. Barely two years later in January 1966, jealousy raises its vicious head again in Mississippi. Giancarlo Esposito balances astuteness, affability, and determination portraying Vernon Dahmer, the local successful businessman and powerful civil-rights advocate who by financially helping poorer citizens raises the ire of less successful anti-segregationist White Knights of the Ku Klux Klansmen (KKK) locally led by Sam Bowers, portrayed by Ethan Embry. They come after Vernon with vengeance; his demise brings in the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). President Johnson is furious; J. Edgar Hoover is under intense pressure. No one is talking to the FBI, Black or White. David Strathairn plays shrewd Special Agent Roy K. Moore, the FBI area supervisor. Concurrently, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II imbues integrity into his characterization of FBI Agent Wayne Strider, recently returned home from Chicago with Allison, portrayed with finesse by Nicole Beharie, his Northern-born, assured and supportive wife; Wayne wants substantive cases.
Frazzled, Moore returns to tried-and-true solutions and requests the Bureau’s mafia hitman-cum-informant’s help. Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of notorious Gregory Scarpa is the epitome vis-à-vis Martin Scorsese's iconic mobsters from Taxi Driver, Good Fellas to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather characters. Moore partners Strider and Scarpa: Black and White and equally as different in temperament, moral code and reasoning. Their initial interactions are tense, “I’m not your driver, I’m your handler,” as is their questioning/gathering facts from Hattiesburg locals, “I told you we ain’t got any rules.” Balance, counterbalance—“You’re that crazy man from New York, ain’t ya?”—drive them deeper into a darker place where they discover an unorthodox, understated understanding. Ultimately, they are both wiser. “Look at you, full of surprises.”
Sascha Penn’s screenplay is hard, moody and coarsish plugged with innuendos, double-meanings, and canny smart-ass remarks worth chuckling about, plus facts worth remembering. Production values are first-rate: Terence Blanchard’s great jazzy score; Tommy Love’s production design; Ante Cheng’s riveting cinematography and Kristan Sprague’s editing. Casting director Kim Coleman pulled together an amazing consummate cast.
Liberties may have been taken with the storyline for cinematic purposes; however, the gist is factual. It was at the height of the civil rights movement, e.g., the Selma to Montgomery marches and Alabama’s Governor George Wallace, that on March 15, 1965, President Johnson addressed Congress calling for expansive legislation to protect voting right and borrowing the movement’s rallying cry, “We shall overcome.” Two days later the bill was introduced; the Southern states’ opposition only served to strengthen spines in getting it passed. 107 minutes (Marinell H.)