Paramount Pictures has released the official trailer for By Any Means, a historical crime thriller starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg.
Set in 1966 Mississippi, the film follows a young Black FBI agent sent to investigate the murders of civil rights leaders. To crack the case, he is forced into a deeply uneasy partnership with Gregory Scarpa, a real-life mafia hitman played by Wahlberg. It is the kind of premise that immediately creates tension, not only because of the danger around the investigation, but because of the moral contradiction at its centre.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays FBI agent Wayne Strider, a man trying to pursue justice in a system already full of compromise, racism and corruption. Mark Wahlberg’s Scarpa, meanwhile, is not presented as a clean hero suddenly doing the right thing. He is a violent criminal being used by the FBI because the normal channels have failed — or, more accurately, because those channels were never built to protect everyone equally.
That tension gives By Any Means a sharper edge than a standard buddy crime thriller. The trailer suggests a story about justice achieved through dirty methods, where the question is not simply whether the killers can be found, but what kind of damage is done when the law turns to someone outside it.
Directed by Elegance Bratton and written by Sascha Penn, the film also stars Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, Giancarlo Esposito, David Strathairn, Ethan Embry, LisaGay Hamilton and LaChanze. Esposito plays civil rights figure Vernon Dahmer, whose real-life murder remains one of the central historical reference points behind the film’s Mississippi setting.
For audiences drawn to intense crime thrillers, By Any Means looks like a heavy, morally complicated release. It has the shape of an investigation, but underneath that is something darker: a story about power, race, violence and the uncomfortable machinery of American justice.
By Any Means opens in theaters on September 4, 2026.
Video source: Paramount Pictures
