So today was just one of those days that can literally spoil your whole mood if you let it. I've been stuck in a place where the network was just terrible from morning till night, I'm talking about no signal, data not connecting, everything just hanging. I couldn't game at all, couldn't go live, couldn't even post anything for my page, my whole content schedule just scattered. I kept turning my phone on and off, moving around to find network, hotspot, everything, nothing worked. At some point I just got tired and said you know what, let me just leave this phone matter and find something else to do before I get unnecessarily angry.
That's how I ended up watching this movie called BY ANY MEANS. I had downloaded it some time ago but I never had time to watch it because I've always been busy with gaming and posting. The movie is a 2026 Paramount film directed by Elegance Bratton, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Wayne Strider and Mark Wahlberg as Greg Scarpa. It's based on true events that happened in Mississippi during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It starts with the story of three civil rights workers who disappeared in 1964, and then it moves to 1966 where this man Vernon Dahmer was helping Black people to register to vote. The KKK guys came in the middle of the night, threw fire bombs into his house and started shooting. He managed to get his family out through the back window but he died from the burns the next morning. That opening alone already tells you this is not a regular action film.
The main plot now is that the FBI sends this young Black agent, Wayne Strider, with his wife to the south to investigate these killings. He is very idealistic, he believes in the law, he believes if you follow due process you will get justice. But the reality on ground is different. Nobody wants to talk to the FBI because everybody is scared of the local sheriff deputies who are working with the Klan. The people are traumatized. So his boss, Roy Moore and Agent Rhodes, decide to pair him with someone nobody would expect, a notorious Brooklyn mob enforcer called Greg Scarpa. This guy is a proper mafia hitman, they call him The Grim Reaper. He doesn't care about law, he doesn't do interrogation, he just grabs people, beats them, threatens them at gunpoint until they talk. And he keeps quoting Malcolm X to justify what he's doing, like by any means necessary.
Honestly the chemistry between Strider and Scarpa is what carried the whole film for me. You have one man trying to keep his soul clean and do things the right way, and the other man telling him that in Mississippi in 1966, the right way will get you killed and no justice will be done. There are scenes where Scarpa will just pick a Klan suspect off the street, drag him to a dark spot and start roughing him up, and Strider will be standing there looking uncomfortable but at the same time he sees that the method is working, witnesses are finally leaking names, they start hearing names like Sam Bowers and his gang. It makes you really uncomfortable as a viewer because you are asking yourself, is this okay? Should the FBI be using a criminal to catch criminals? The movie doesn't give you a straight answer, it just shows you how messy justice was during that civil rights era, and how the government sometimes had to make dirty deals behind closed doors.
At the end of the day, even though I lost a whole day of gaming and posting because of this terrible network, I feel like watching BY ANY MEANS was worth it. It's 107 minutes but it feels longer because it's heavy. It's violent, there's strong language, but it's also very emotional, especially when you remember these things actually happened to real people. It's not just about gunshots, it's about what people had to sacrifice for voting rights, for freedom. If you are someone who likes crime thriller, historical drama, and movies based on true life, you will love this one. It will make you think, it will make you angry, and it will make you appreciate how far things have come. I definitely recommend it, go watch it when you have good network and light, you won't regret it.
MY OVERRALL RATIN IS 7:10.
THANKS FOR VISITING