By Any Means, the movie plot

By Any Means is the crime and thriller movie in production. The plot is set in Mississippi in 1966, and focuses on an Italian-American mafia hitman, Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg) and a young African-American FBI agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), forced to collaborate to investigate the murders of civil rights leaders.

By Any Means, the movie trailer

"Why did you decide to enter the office?" asks the chief to the agent, in the released trailer; "I believe in justice, and I believe that blacks should have a way to reach it" he responds. "You will be paired with a person linked to organized crime" the chief then tells him, since the agent doesn't want to work behind a desk. He thus meets Gregory, who uses rough methods, like hitting a man with a piece of lego on the legs to make him talk, or slamming another's head against glass. Then on a road at night Gregory shoots a policeman who was threatening the agent: "Look around. There are no witnesses, there was no crime. Let's get out of here, I'm starving" Gregory reassures him.

By Any Means, the movie cast

Mark Wahlberg has recently worked in The Family Plan 2, Play Dirty and Arthur the King, and in Balls Up. Giancarlo Esposito has recently worked in the TV series Breaking Bad - Side Effects and The Prophecy.

In the cast there are also David Strathairn, who has worked on The Luckiest Man in America: in Zootopia 2 he voices Milton Lynxley; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, performer in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom - in the role of Black Manta - Matrix Resurrections and Ambulance.

The direction is by Elegance Bratton, who has already directed The Inspection, Move Ya Body: The Birth of House and an episode of Grotesquerie. The story is drawn from the real case of Gregory Scarpa Sr., called the Reaper or the Mad Hatter, who in the '70s and '80s held the role of trusted killer for boss Carmine Persico, and then became an FBI informant: in 1993 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders and died the following year, after contracting AIDS following a blood transfusion.

By Any Means, the filming and movie release date

The production is by Hammerstone Studios, Thunder Road, Freedom Principle and North.Five.Six. Filming began in April 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, transformed for the occasion into 1960s Mississippi: it concluded in June. The movie is released in US theaters on September 4, 2026.