By Any Means Trailer Sends Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg Into a Deadly Fight for Justice
Paramount Pictures has released the official trailer for By Any Means, a tense new crime thriller from director Elegance Bratton that turns a true story into a stark look at justice, corruption, and what happens when the people tasked with upholding the law are forced to confront its limits.
Set in 1960s Mississippi, the film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a young Black FBI agent investigating a wave of brutal killings targeting civil rights leaders. His assignment pulls him into dangerous territory, but the case becomes even more volatile when he is forced to work alongside notorious mafia hitman Greg Scarpa, played by Mark Wahlberg.
When the Law Is Not Enough
Rather than presenting the partnership as a simple clash of opposites, the trailer builds its tension around the uneasy space between them. These are two men divided by background, power, and principle, yet both seem to understand that the law has limits. As the investigation grows more dangerous, By Any Means pushes into the uncomfortable overlap between justice and vengeance, where doing the right thing may mean abandoning the rules altogether.
That moral uncertainty gives the film its strongest pull. Abdul-Mateen appears to bring a controlled intensity to the agent at the center of the story, while Wahlberg’s Scarpa enters as a much more unpredictable force, someone whose methods may be effective precisely because they are so dangerous.
Around them, the film builds out a strong ensemble, with Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, LisaGay Hamilton, LaChanze, Ethan Embry, David Strathairn, and Giancarlo Esposito rounding out the cast. By Any Means was written by Sascha Penn and produced by Alex Lebovici, Chester Algernal Gordon, Bratton, Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Wahlberg, and Stephen Levinson.
By Any Means is only in theatres on September 4, 2026.
