‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Review: Mahershala Ali Shines

In cinema, the life of an assassin is often a solitary one. The demands of being a killer are enough to fill a man’s time. The fewer people around him, the fewer chances for error or tragedy. And then there are the philosophical questions: How can one participate in life when your occupation is death? Can a killer give life and nurture it properly? These questions also haunt our veterans, coming home to their families after killing abroad. Settling down becomes a new struggle, especially when money is low and employment options dwindle. As the world becomes more violent and less hospitable, the business of murder endures.

This is the situation Latif (Mahershala Ali) finds himself in after a stint in the Marines. He’s continued killing stateside, employed by the rich and corrupt Mike (Laith Nakli). Latif’s illegal employment alienates him from his clean-cut, suburban brother Talib (Tramell Tillman) and disapproving father-in-law Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito).

Latif is a strong, quiet man and lethal with a knife, but he’s also a father. When his wife Khadijah (Shakirah DeMesier) suddenly dies, leaving him as the sole parent of his three children, his work and family life collide. Soon he has to answer to Fatiha (Adia), his thoughtful and intelligent adolescent daughter, who challenges him with questions he doesn’t want to answer. His devout son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) — still full of the energy and optimism of childhood — forces Latif to confront his lapsed faith. Then there’s Aziza, a nursing baby robbed of both the nourishment and comfort of her mother. 

Latif must change his priorities rapidly. Suddenly, life for him becomes a constant search for breast milk to feed his daughter. Fatiha tries to give her sister formula, but the baby can’t digest it. Her constant hunger is a living manifestation of Latif’s inability to take his wife’s place. More comfortable in the role of provider, Latif has to learn how to tap into his nurturing side. Writer and director Bassam Tariq gives us a figure rarely seen on American screens: a Black Muslim man portrayed tenderly, with his family and faith as an anchor. 

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a crime film with a large beating heart, telling an achingly human story of a father mourning the death of his wife while killing to protect and provide for his three children. As Ali’s quiet assassin cuts through Houston with his knife, a criminal underworld unravels around him. He makes a dangerous enemy in Pastor Kwan (John Cho), another troubled veteran who claims to be a man of faith. But while Latif kills to survive, Kwan’s only interest is power. Family, religion and violence collide to create a blood-soaked portrait of America as a dying empire being overrun by grifters pretending to be men of God.

Cho is having the time of his life playing against type as the unstable and eerily familiar Kwan. He’s a distinctly American villain, obsessed with guns, controlling women, and feeding the flames of a manufactured culture war. With a mouth full of gold teeth and a cowboy hat, Cho fully commands the screen. Whenever he and Ali share a scene together, you never want it to end.

Ali is perfectly cast in the role of Latif, an imposing man of few words radiating both warmth and strength. In the decade since Moonlight, Ali has been a great actor in search of a film role worthy of his talents. He elevated Green Book as much as he could, but the film around him still came up short. For a while, audiences looked forward to his leading role in a Blade film that never happened. Thankfully, Tyriq has finally given Ali a leading role suitable for an Oscar-winning actor of his stature. It’s a role so perfect for him and the times we’re living in. With Islamophobia running rampant around the world, being justified by racist governments and institutions misrepresenting the religion and its followers, it’s refreshing to watch a film that doesn’t traffic in that propaganda.

But Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is more than a loving portrayal of Islam — Tyriq has crafted a film that explores the possibility of a form of masculinity that allows for the full range of human emotion. By the end of the movie, Latif hasn’t just learned how to be a better father. He has become a better man right before our eyes.