By Any Means 2026: When Justice Starts Looking Like Revenge
The Trouble With Playing By The Rules Too clean, too polite, too late. That's the problem with justice in By Any Means 2026 , a crime thriller directed by Elegance Bratton and written by Sascha Penn. Set in 1966 Mississippi, the film follows a young Black FBI agent investigating the murders of civil rights leaders alongside Gregory Scarpa, a notorious Mafia hitman. I find the partnership more unsettling than exciting. One man represents a system that claims to protect citizens, while the other operates beyond its rules. And yet, the criminal sometimes appears more useful than the institution. That's a nasty contradiction. The film wants us to feel the satisfaction of watching violent men face consequences, but it also asks us to consider why those consequences arrive through another violent man. For me, that tension is the film's most interesting idea, even when its action-thriller instincts threaten to swallow the historical anger beneath it. Mississippi Under A Merciles...