YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER Review: Singularly Engaging, Singularly Provocative Religious-Themed Action-Thriller

The title of the Mahershala Ali-led, Bassam Tariq-directed Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an action-thriller with more than just action or thrills on its mind, derives from a well-known “Hadith,” a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in Islam.

 

Depending on the translation, the question differs slightly (e.g., “Whom should you honor foremost?”, “Who deserves your companionship and finest treatment?”), but the answer, repeated three times, remains the same: “Your mother.” "Your father" comes in fourth and last. 

 

Ali’s character, Latif, a Muslim hitman (“he only kills the undeserving and the unrighteous”), finds himself at a literal, metaphorical crossroads when his wife dies suddenly, not through random or intentional violence as a genre enthusiast might expect, but through natural causes. Her loss leaves Latif reeling, simultaneously questioning his faith in an unmerciful deity and becoming the sole parental figure for his three children: Fatiha (Adia), his teenage daughter; Qadir (Jahleel Kamara), his preteen son; and Aziza, his infant daughter (Brooklyn and Jaxon Hughes). 

 

As Latif and his family begin the painful process of adjusting their lives to their new, unwanted reality, Latif’s boss, Mike Mahmoudi (Laith Nakli), a businessman with shady underworld ties and a spoiled, obnoxious, self-entitled nephew and porn producer, Hatty (Abubakr Ali), become the unwelcome targets for Hwan Yoon (John Cho), the ultra-right-wing, gun-obsessed leader of a Christian church he founded after a tour in one of America’s Forever Wars. Yoon believes his mother’s intercession through Christian prayer saved him from almost certain death on a battlefield. 

 

Yoon’s beliefs might represent a twisted version of Christianity, but like Latif, he’s no less sincere. For Yoon, however, he puts those beliefs into direct action: He views Hatty, wrongly or rightly, not just as a sinner who needs to be redeemed, but as a personification of evil that must be stopped by any means necessary, up to and including an armed intervention (invasion and occupation) of Mahmoudi’s gated compound. It’s not quite the “clash of civilizations” the conservative historian Samuel P. Huntington predicted before 9-11 and the subsequent “War on Terror,” but, at least on the surface, it’s a reasonable facsimile. 

 

For his part, Latif wants nothing to do with Mike, Hatty, or their territorial beef with Yoon. He wants to be a good father to his children, provide for their everyday needs, and ensure their safety. Obtaining breast milk for the formula-allergic Aziza, however, turns into a film-long journey.

 

Every attempt by an increasingly desperate Latif to find breast milk ends in abject failure. His mosque offers only limited assistance, leading Latif to a local WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) office, then a doctor’s office, back to the now-closed WIC office, and eventually a lactating stripper-turned-true-believer, Fugazi (Tiffany Boone), who puts an unfortunate Latif into direct contact with Yoon and his heavily armed god squad. 

 

Typical of action-thrillers, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother includes periodic bursts of well-choreographed, bloody violence, usually involving Latif, less prone to violence than you’d imagine for a card-carrying member of the National Association for Hitmen (NAH for short), hacking, slashing, and dicing his way through any number of henchmen, god squad-related or not, all of them highly satisfying. Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) puts Ali’s multi-year training to the proverbial, giving the audience a hint of what Ali-as-Blade (the cinematic Marvel version) would have looked and sounded like onscreen. 

 

Atypically, though, Latif’s in-film preference for restraint and conflict avoidance leaves Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother with long stretches without the kicking, punching, or swordplay that genre fans expect from the action genre. Instead, a contemplative, shaken Latif struggles to retain his Muslim faith, attempting to reconcile the physical and emotional loss of his wife with the god of Islam. Not even his imam, Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito), can bring him back into alignment with his previous beliefs. Similarly, neither Hatty’s avowed atheism nor Yoon’s militant faux-Christianity bring Latif back into the fold. 

 

For Latif, it takes something else altogether, a miracle of sorts not usually found in an action-thriller where only the hero or the protagonist’s physical prowess matter, not his individual beliefs, the beliefs of his family, or, in the final analysis, the power of prayer and its manifestation in the real world. It doubles as an earnest, unironic affirmation of spirituality and, seen from a slightly different perspective, as what would otherwise be described as “magical realism” minus the direct connection to Christianity or Islam. 

 

While Tariq adequately lays the groundwork for the film’s third act, it’s still bound to be controversial, divisive even, especially among genre fans unaccustomed to provocations like the one(s) found in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Whatever their reactions, there’s little, if any, doubt that Tariq and Ali’s collaboration has resulted, simply put, in the kind of filmmaking that demands to be seen, heard, and experienced.