By Any Means: Mark Wahlberg, The Mob and U.S. Civil Rights Action… Go Figure

By Liz Braun

Rating: B

By Any Means is as unlikely a tale as you can imagine, but it happens to be partly based on real events.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are important names in the American civil rights movement: the three young activists were in Mississippi organizing Black voters in 1964 and were murdered for their efforts by the Ku Klux Klan. Their disappearance in Neshoba County prompted an FBI investigation dubbed Mississippi Burning.

The FBI was fairly certain the three men had been murdered, but it took six weeks to find their bodies. No one would talk. Turns out a mafia hitman named Greg Scarpa Sr. was crucial in helping the FBI find out where the murdered men were buried. Scarpa, a cold-blooded killer and FBI informant, used unorthodox methods (bribery? beatings? begging?) to find out where the bodies were hidden.

That’s the kernel of truth at the heart of By Any Means, a film that begins with a quick primer on U.S. race relations in the 1960s. This intro uses archival news footage to bring viewers up to speed on how very little things have changed in 60 years.

Then, back to movie-land. By Any Means is violent. It's 1964, and we are treated to the sight of a man tied up and getting beaten to a bloody pulp. He eventually coughs up the location where the bodies of the civil rights workers are buried.

The thug doing the beating — Greg Scarpa Sr. — is played by Mark Wahlberg, here kitted out with a distracting prosthetic nose and a terrifying wig.

Time marches on. Now it’s 1966 and we meet an earnest young FBI agent, Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who has returned to his childhood community in Mississippi to help combat the ongoing violence against civil rights workers.

Strider investigates the death of Vernon Dahmer (Giancarlo Esposito) but can’t get anyone to talk about Dahmer’s killing. Soon enough, the FBI sends for Scarpa to come back to Mississippi and help motivate people to talk about what they know.

Scarpa shows up and starts cracking crackers’ heads in and around Hattiesburg. Agent Strider, a stickler for the law, has been assigned to work with Scarpa as his “handler.” He is horrified to watch Scarpa’s methods — shooting and smashing his way through the landscape.

After the Klan menaces his home and family, however, Strider begins to take Scarpa’s view of it all. The two men join forces and use violent means to catch violent people.

By Any Means is directed by Elegance Bratton, who acknowledges the influence of John Woo in making this buddy cop crime thriller. This is not, as Bratton has said, your grandma’s civil rights movie — Scarpa tells Strider he prefers Malcolm X to Dr. Martin Luther King, he points out that turning the other cheek isn’t working and he advises Strider that when it comes to the racist bad guys, “I’d kill ‘em all, every last one.” Some may view this as subversive.

Wahlberg, with his over-the-top propulsive presence, leads a strong cast that includes Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, David Strathairn and LisaGay Hamilton.

As Strider, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II brings the gravitas that anchors the movie; his understated performance tethers the action whenever Wahlberg starts chewing the scenery. As for that, let us freely confess an obsession with Mark Wahlberg and his existence as some kind of human nuclear micro-reactor, a barely contained energy source radiating a strange mix of exuberance and street-smart belligerence.

Whatever the hell that is, it makes By Any Means kind of ridiculous but also engaging. And, preposterous touches notwithstanding, it couldn’t hurt to illustrate a bit of history on the big screen.

By Any Means. Directed by Elegance Bratton, written by Sascha Penn. Starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie, and David Strathairn. In theatres September 4.