Mark Wahlberg’s New Vigilante Thriller Falls Into A Familiar Hollywood Trap

Vernon Dahmer Sr. of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was a businessman, a father, and a civil rights leader. In the 1960s, he focused on helping black people register to vote, even paying the poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford them. The Ku Klux Klan rewarded Dahmer for his work by firebombing his home, his car, and his grocery store on January 10, 1966. He died in the hospital the next day. These are facts, as is the fact that Greg Scarpa Sr. was a mobster from New York.

What’s less provable is Scarpa’s involvement with the FBI, specifically as a strongman who operated outside of the law when the bureau was having trouble gathering intel. G-men had a set of rules they were expected to abide by, and while history has shown they didn’t always do so, they likely did refrain from extracting confessions from the business end of a baseball bat. For “By Any Means,” a movie based on the murder of Vernon Dahmer and Scarpa’s possible involvement in bringing his killers to justice, historical veracity isn’t important. The story is more about the racial strife of the time period and the limits to which good men can be pushed before they break.