Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, 2026.
Written and Directed by Bassam Tariq.
Starring Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Abubakr Ali, Laith Nakli, Adia, Jahleel Kamara, Tiffany Boone, Tramell Tillman, John Henry Ward, Alyssa Kim, Ashley P. Jones, and Aaron Goodson.
SYNOPSIS:
Follows Latif, a devoutly religious hitman, who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.
While writer/director Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother centers on a modern-day hitman at a crossroads in life, it is more fitting to outright label it a samurai movie bursting with influences ranging from Akira Kurosawa to the Blade collaboration between the filmmaker and multi-Oscar-winning star Mahershala Ali that never graduated from the screenwriting phase.
Reeling from the unexpected loss of his wife, contract killer (working from a self-imposed code of honor limiting him to only wielding knives or swords), Muslim Latif (Mahershala Ali) is now questioning that faith and code as life places him into “shoes three times bigger than his size” in stepping into the prominent guardian role of his three children, one of them being an infant desperately in need of breast milk (the poor baby can’t hold down formula). Naturally, there is an exploration of Islamic faith, but the premise is also deeply relatable in the sense that when a loved one tragically passes (especially long before it’s time for them to cross over to the other side), it feels as if whatever religion or divine forces we consider ourselves a believer in have stabbed us in the back, regardless of how much the teachings have been followed and creeds have been lived by. It is an internal pain that Mahershala Ali sells with blindsided vulnerability, in stark contrast to an opening sequence depicting him, for lack of a better phrase, on-the-job (he does appear to only kill despicable individuals, such as neo-Nazis, further operating by a moral compass).
Per usual for this genre, escaping the criminal underworld to place priorities and responsibilities elsewhere requires one last job. It’s a task that brings Latif inside the circle of a cowboy-dressed religious extremist born-again Christian loon who appears to have lost all of his marbles following military service, played by an unsettlingly charismatic and ill-intentioned John Cho, unlike any role he has played before. Bluntly put, he is a semi-automatic gun-toting cult leader hell-bent on cleansing America, which draws him toward the sleazy nephew of Latif’s handler (Abubakr Ali), accusing him of sex trafficking when, in reality, he is shooting porn and running a seemingly legitimate website (as legitimate as something like that can be, I suppose).
Blood is intermittently spilled as Mahershala Ali busts out cleanly photographed sweeping spin kicks and, once again, contrasts sensitivity with a hulking physique that sees him charging headfirst into enemies, at one point taking him and his target flying forward off a music stage into five rows of folding chairs. However, the film’s real, exhausting empathy comes from watching Latif take on a different necessary mission: running all over Houston, baby in tow, to get more breast milk. This also means older daughter Fatiha (Adia) ends up taking on a more motherly role (a dynamic that makes him feel like a failure to his family), watching over the baby and her younger brother Quadir (Jahleel Kamara). Both are also rapidly growing up beyond their father’s comprehension and acceptance, and also Muslim, while coming to take note of his hypocrisy and cracking faith despite also proclaiming his devoutness.
Sure, it could be considered a cliché to mention a protagonist having his faith tested, but Bassam Tariq does so here with a deft display of cultural specificity, relatable heartbreak, and colliding scummy underbelly communities (some of them also religious) that lead to explosively rewarding violence and deeper interrogation of religion itself. It’s a topic most films and directors are keen to take one side and take a stance on, whereas here it is a push and pull, ever-expanding commentary as more and more characters are caught up in this swirl of a father who is, once again, mostly minding his business and trying to obtain some breast milk, which itself requires jumping through hoops due to the unhelpful state of American healthcare. The ending might strain believability, but it’s arguably offset by the lofty messaging Bassam Tariq aims for.
A temporary solution appears to be reconnecting with a sex worker (Tiffany Boone) who offered breastfeeding in the presence of Fatiha and Quadir, which Latif understandably quickly disapproved of upon finding out. He soon realizes that she may be his only option, although she is also wrapped up in various religious factions trying to save her from herself. Latif, with his back turned, allows this woman to breastfeed his baby, which stirs up conflicting thoughts pertaining to his faith and not only familial roles, but what he is equipped for and unable to do. This also includes the subject of sex itself in America, with two of his children reaching a stage of curiosity, as Quadir tries to suppress it while Fatiha is becoming westernized, and certainly has an interesting choice of porn, as her father discovers.
For as much as Latif is losing his own group on Islamic faith and arriving at a boiling point of pushing on his son that it’s all a load of nonsense with no one listening, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother also depicts how it coexists in an American space. It’s about religion itself as a tool and how it can be wielded for nefarious motives. Alongside that, it’s a moody, artsy piece bursting with color and blood trails, some left by Latif himself, at an intersection of violence, religion, and sex. Thematic depth aside, it’s also wholly satisfying watching a modern-day samurai kill his way through unsavory groups for breast milk of all necessities, without playing that motive off as a joke.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
