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Latif, the solemn hitman played soulfully by Mahershala Ali, carries diapers in his kill kit. I can’t tell if that’s because they come in handy when soaking up pools of blood on the fly; or because at a moment’s notice the hitman has to switch over from his brutal occupation to daddy duties. Or perhaps it’s both for this contract killer who comes armed with a blade and baby wipes, who takes lives and nurtures them, whose life is composed of jarring and poetic contradictions, much like the movie he’s in.
Those contradictions are on full striking display in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s opening moments, an explosive close-quarters brawl in a restroom, after which Latif uses the baby wipes to clean up the mess he made with that blade. It’s a lovely image, in a film filled with so many, cutting right through the tension within this character. It also feels like a wink to the audience from Ali and writer/director Bassam Tariq, a way for them to acknowledge right off the top the distracting mess made by that other Blade.
Tariq and Ali were collaborating on Marvel’s Blade reboot. Ali was announced to star as the vampire-slayer formerly played by Wesley Snipes all the way back in 2019. Tariq signed on to write and direct in 2021 but departed a year later. Ali recently revealed that, after being strung along for seven years in development, the reboot was not happening. It’s easy to assume that some of the ideas Tariq and Ali had for Blade made their way into this new collaboration, in which Ali gets to finally wield a blade and John Cho, of Harold and Kumar fame, stuns as a vampiric foe. The echoes and parallels are there but minimal, perhaps even coincidental.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is its own beautiful singular thing, partly a stylish and pulpy neo-western thriller about a father racked with guilt, navigating violence that comes heavy and uneasy, but first and foremost a drama about a family reconciling their Muslim faith with their actions, their environments and their grief.
Both Tariq and Ali are Muslims. The former’s debut, Mogul Mowgli, and his directing work on the Prime Video series Bait, both starring Riz Ahmed, were about young British-Pakistani men who internalize hostility towards their faith. In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Tariq builds an even more nuanced portrait of faith around Ali, who seizes the rare opportunity to explore his religion onscreen.
Ali’s Latif, who once taught kids at prayer school, fashions himself as a righteous killer with a code, meting out justice to those who offend Islam. Getting paid for it is beside the point, he argues, when a supportive but critical Imam played by Giancarlo Esposito takes Latif to task.
As the film opens, when Latif is bashing that victim’s head against a bathroom sink and unceremoniously tying up his corpse, his own wife (Shakirah DeMesier) lies there dying, her body delicately cared for by their community in Houston (the movie was shot in Atlanta). That leaves Latif a widower who, alongside his eldest, Fatiha (Adia, quietly mesmerizing), cares for a curious young son (Jahleel Kamara) and infant daughter who won’t take formula.
So much of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is propelled by Latif’s frantic search for breast milk, inspired by the writer and director’s own ordeal when his wife fell ill. Ali is especially breathtaking in these moments, with Latif looking weathered and exasperated, but fighting to maintain his wits and composure, as he’s turned away from a milk bank that requires a prescription and accosted by a doctor in the family (Tramell Tillman) when seeking help. Latif finally has to square the assistance he gets from a breastfeeding sex worker (Tiffany Boone) with his at times rigid and hypocritical moral and religious code.
Those negotiations are constant and granular. At every turn, Latif and Fatiha figure out how to make their Islamic faith work for who they are and the situations they’re in. How important is fasting when your frantic ordeals make you forget to eat altogether? How do we grapple with scriptures that limit growth and empathy, but not ignore the profound lessons also found in those texts? In the grand scheme of things, does it matter that your adolescent daughter is using the Mormon neighbour’s wifi to watch Furry porn, which must be all kinds of Haram? These are the questions that make Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother so grounded, compassionate, and, dare I say, divine.
That spiritual journey is also the bridge between the intimate family story and the thriller plot. Latif finds himself caught in a beef between his employer’s son, a producer of “Habibi porn” (Abubakr Ali) who tests what the former stands for, and Cho’s Pastor Hwan Yoon. The latter, captivating in a gold grill, cowboy hat and southern drawl, is an Iraq war veteran who turned evangelical after he supposedly rose back from the dead on the battlefield. His heel turn towards religious fanaticism means surrounding himself with tooled-up mercenaries and preaching about Christ at gunpoint.
Tariq deftly navigates the divide between Latif and Pastor Hwan, setting up binaries and conflicts that could easily give in to Muslim versus Christian sensationalism. But his approach is soulful and considered, allowing everyone their convictions and bandwidth for the mercy and grace the movie ultimately preaches about.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother isn’t just interrogating faith. It’s embracing and appreciating those jarring and poetic contradictions that come with the territory.
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Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is premiering at the Toronto film festival and opens in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles on 25 September, following a wider release on 2 October and 9 October
