By Any Means: Movie Review

Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Giancarlo Esposito, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas

Director: Elegance Bratton

There's a kernel of a great idea in 1960s-set crime drama By Any Means. 

Unfortunately, this tale of a mob turned FBI stooge and enforcer (played by Wahlberg with increasing inflection as if he's been possessed by Andy Samberg) and his team up with an overlooked black FBI agent (Wonder Man's intense Abdul=Mateen II) delivers a script and tropes that are as plain to see on the screen as the large prosthetic nose on Wahlberg's character.

Abdul=Mateen II's G-man Special Agent Wayne Strider is a returning hero to his Mississippi home town - but unfortunately, despite the adulation of the locals who see his rise in the force as something to be proud of, his superiors are holding him back from cases.

However, he gets his big break when American Civil Rights movement leader Vernon Dahmer (an all-too brief appearance from Esposito) is murdered during an attack by the Ku Klux Klan for his work trying to help recruit Black voters to the polls.

But he soon finds he's forced into a partnership with mafia hitman turned FBI informant Gregory Scarpa, who's already helped uncover what happened to three young people trying to sign up voters years ago in the same town.

As Strider deals with his growing resentment of Scarpa's methods (while housing his own righteous anger at what's happening), he soon finds himself caught in a powderkeg of a situation as their investigation is stonewalled.

Director Elegance Bratton could have brought a seething anger to this story, but mixing the kind of relationship that was central to Oscar winner Green Book and giving it a broad Mafia twist proves to be anything but potent in this formulaic plodding approach to a story based on true events.

The underwritten story is sizzling with potential, but delivers a flat, uninspired and predictable piece that just lacks any kind of hint of tension or suspense. Wahlberg is nothing but cliche in his performance as Scarpa, using the broadly written story to deliver little to no nuance to the Mobster who clearly is from the streets, but appears to have been written as an outtake from Goodfellas.

Abdul-Mateen II delivers some gusto, but the conflict within him is never really given time to build to a crescendo, and while he brings some of the boiling moments that are needed, the script fails him badly.

Most of the film uses its overly familiar soundtrack to do the hard lifting, even if it rolls into familiar grounds with an almost Jan Hammer-inspired music score for a chase sequence that feels like it's taken from the 1980s.

The most interesting part of the film comes in the footnotes that accompany the credits, hinting at what could have been a sensational story and a great origin tale for Scarpa's informing. But sadly, By Any Means delivers what it wants to - it's just a shame that it does it by any means other than justice to its leads and its inspiration.