Do you want me to review this fall’s first Oscar-bait drama?
Yes, By Any Means necessary …
Ha, you said the title! I’ll do it, but don’t hate me afterwards …
Okay …
It’s 1966, and Vernon Dahmer (Giancarlo Esposito), the Forest County Chapter President of the NAACP, is helping Black Americans register to vote. The Klan doesn’t take kindly to his efforts and firebombs his house one night. Dahmer gets his family out, but he doesn’t make it. Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an FBI agent and old friend of Dahmer’s, gets on the case.
His superiors, Special Agents Moore & Rhodes (David Strathairn & Josh Lucas), partner him with their special informant, Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg). Scarpa, a mafia Capo, was introduced in the prologue beating a confession out of a suspect in the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman & Schwerner. The FBI wants Strider to let Scarpa do his thing to solve this murder, too. Naturally, the two “partners” disagree on how to do things down south. But they’ll pull it off in the end, right?
For this cinematic assignment, director Elegance Bratton is paired with a screenplay by Sascha Penn. It’s not a subtle screenplay, considering its odious villains and brutal violence. Yeah, I know, how would anyone make the Klan and their sympathizers sympathetic? But Scarpa’s methods on most of their witnesses lose their luster after a while. For most of the movie, he keeps espousing to Strider about how good violence is. I’m not sure if it’s cathartic or horrific when Strider executes a bad guy near the end.
Let’s talk more about Scarpa. He doesn’t take it well when he’s assigned to the case, but why? He most certainly isn’t ashamed of the violence he’s done. Does he not want to leave his family? Maybe, but he has a mistress when Strider meets him. Maybe he just doesn’t like working for the feds? It doesn’t do a good job delving into his background, including how he took to Malcolm X’s teachings (which provide the film its title). He and Strider have decent chemistry, but Scarpa shooting a barking dog threatens to disintegrate the audience’s goodwill towards him. Yes, I know that the real-life Scarpa wasn’t a nice man, by any means, but the film Scarpa is a little flat.
Meanwhile, Strider is much more tangible a character. He tells Scarpa about the time he successfully retaliated against a racist cop, which is more backstory than what Scarpa gives. Other than that, he’s got good chemistry with his wife, Allison (Nicole Beharie), and struggles not to give into violence. It takes the murder of a witness, Rebecca Brewer (LisaGay Hamilton), to push him that far. But I’ve been thinking; Strider is a fictional composite character of several actual FBI agents, and he has more depth than a character based on a real-life man. Shouldn’t they both be equal?
What about the supporting cast? LaChanze is likable as Dahmer’s widow, Hattie. Esposito makes the most of his limited screentime as Dahmer, especially during his last stand. Dahmer’s assassins, led by Sam Bowers (Ethan Embry), are evil as they can be, but I didn’t find them the worst around. That title belongs to the racist cops who refuse to accept Strider’s FBI credentials (one of whom is shot dead by Scarpa). Strathairn, as usual, makes for a good moral authority figure. Lucas, meanwhile, is just there.
Mississippi Burning, which dealt with the 1964 murders, won an Oscar for cinematographer Peter Biziou. Ante Cheng’s intense orange hued imagery for this film ought to get him shortlisted, at least. It’s warm, but not inviting, especially when it’s used with Scarpa’s torture. The attack on the Dahmers is perfectly harrowing, though the decision to briefly pivot to first-person POV as if it was Doom is a bizarre one. Wahlberg is kind of unrecognizable as Scarpa, thanks to a rather interesting makeup job. Terence Blanchard’s appropriately moody score ought to get it on the Oscar-shortlist in a few months.
I’ll bet that it already has an Oscar-nomination in the bag: its title song sung by David Kushner & The Isley Brothers was written by Diane Warren. I don’t see it breaking her losing streak; it’s good, but not great. Still, I’d be open to her winning at least once, whenever …
Anyway, should you watch By Any Means? Yeah, if you want to, particularly if you’re looking to check an item off the upcoming Oscar checklist. It's an odd movie, to say the least, but it's not a boring one. It's all for violence, but the torture scenes never outstay whatever welcome they had (unlike some other movies). It's probably worth comparing to Mississippi Burning, whose fictional Agent Monk (Badja Djola) was loosely inspired by Scarpa. You've got plenty of time before the Oscars, so you can watch it whenever.
I think I've said enough.
