What do you get when you pair a stoic black FBI agent in 1960s Mississippi with a sociopathic Italian hitman? The result, in By Any Means, is a highly entertaining buddy-cop action comedy starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg as the unlikeliest of partners.
Loosely inspired by real events, By Any Means follows Wayne Strider, an FBI agent and detective from Chicago, sent back to the bureau in his hometown in Mississippi. Abdul-Mateen plays Strider as the sort of quiet stoic accustomed to hostile territory, like the American drug agents operating in cartel-controlled Colombia in Narcos. Flashing an FBI badge in the South in 1966, he may as well be telling people he is, in fact, a time traveler from 2010, when a black man is president of the United States. Strider knows when to pick his fights. At one crime scene, a local police officer simply scoffs at his badge and tells him to scram — a justifiable invitation to pugilism, but Abdul-Mateen’s blithe indifference makes clear that this sort of dismissal is routine and indulging it would only be counterproductive.
