‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Is a Unique Blend of Deep Faith and Pulp Thrills
You’ve likely never seen a movie where a Muslim hitman is raising three kids and trying to find breast milk for his baby.
Stories of violent men wrestling with Christianity are fairly common in media. That’s in part because so much of our media comes out of Hollywood, and according to Pew Research, America is 62% Christian and 29% are religiously unaffiliated. Therefore, it’s not too surprising that any stories about American Muslims, who make up 1% of the population, as told by Muslims (rather than others seeking to define that group), are exceedingly rare. On that level alone, it’s worth seeing Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a film that embraces Muslim culture and faith from its opening scene. However, rather than a polemic or an attempt to proselytize, the movie sits at the limits of what a man’s faith will endure and whether he will be a sword for its vengeance or a shield for his family. Imbued with pulp pleasures like colorful villains and distinctive settings, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is, if nothing else, a singular vision in the Hollywood landscape.
Latif (Mahershala Ali) is mourning the loss of his wife but barely has time to grieve when he’s not only raising their three kids, Fatiha (Adia), Qadir (Jaheel Kamara), and infant daughter, but also trying to work his day job as a hitman. His boss, Mike (Laith Nakli), wants Latif to kill Pastor Hwan (John Cho), a born-again ex-soldier who’s targeting Mike’s nephew Hatty (Abubakr Ali), accusing him of sex trafficking when Hatty claims he’s only a pornographer. But Latif’s primary concern is finding breast milk for his infant daughter, who can’t digest formula. Latif, a former Quran teacher now pushed to violence, must work to protect his family while clinging to the remnants of his faith.
Your Mother is an ambitious attempt to weave three distinct, separate tones together. One is a Mr. Mom-style plot of a single father with a teenage daughter whose sexual identity is evolving in ways he doesn’t understand, an adolescent son trying to figure out the world, and an infant daughter who needs to be tended to and cared for. Then there’s another plot about faith, where Latif is a borderline atheist yet still looks to his friend and imam, Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito), for counsel. Finally, there’s the pulp element involving Hwan and Hatty, which feels pulled from a comic book, especially with Hatty’s website bragging about “100% Halal” pornography and Hwan’s golden grill with little crucifixes on the teeth.
I can’t say that the movie always clicks these pieces together, but I admire that Tariq is even trying. The film isn’t so esoteric that it’s only for people of Muslim faith, but nor is it so broad that it loses any distinguishing marks. The film opens with Fatiha relating a story to Qadir of “who should I put first,” with the Prophet replying, “Your Mother,” and that is the film’s entry point for what it means within this faith and within this particular world of Latif’s great burden. He is a violent man, and his violence collides with his need to nurture and protect. While never violent towards his children, there’s a sense that life would somehow be easier if he could just give himself over to killing and be the violent retribution that Mike wants him to be. He can be a father under certain circumstances, but being a mother as well is so much harder.
It takes an actor of Ali’s caliber to make this all cohere into a believable performance, but, unsurprisingly, he’s more than up to the task. There’s a stoicism to Latif that belies his tender nature, a man who is never going to give up on his family but may be close to giving up on himself. There’s so much simmering anger beneath Latif’s attitude, and yet Ali lets us know that it will never be directed at innocents. This is not an evil man, but he doesn’t know how to be a father in such dire circumstances, and the difficulty of just finding breast milk carries the same stakes as whether he’ll be able to fight off Mike or Hwan’s goons. I love seeing Ali’s action-star physicality here, but he also reminds us that he didn’t win two Oscars by accident.
Ali and Tariq were originally supposed to make a Blade movie together for Marvel, and watching Your Mother, it feels like they had a distinctive take, but Marvel said, “We don’t really do that here. We assign homework.” That’s not to say that everything in Your Mother works because the big swings in the plot can be jarring, but at least the film is never dull. There hasn’t been anything like this from a Hollywood studio as long as I can remember. Tales of Muslim life typically come from the Middle East or Europe, and we don’t tend to see them in America unless they’re being cast as terrorists. Marvel did flirt with a Muslim household in Ms. Marvel but never wanted to make her faith part of her character when she hit the big screen in The Marvels. I don’t know how much reach Your Mother will have, but I’m so glad it exists and embraces Muslim life while still confidently working within the mold of an action thriller.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is one of those movies where I walked out of it feeling mixed, but the more I think about it, the more I like what it’s trying to do, even if it’s not always successful. Everything Ali and Tariq are doing here is genuinely interesting; they’re not asking for applause simply because of representation. They’re unpacking a view of Muslim life in the present age while using the action genre as a foothold for audiences who know nothing about Islam. You don’t need to break out a Quran to enjoy the movie, and if you want to see it only to watch Ali mess some dudes up, then you’ll leave satisfied. But Your Mother has more on its mind than quick, bloody thrills, and it’s worthwhile to go on its singular journey.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens tomorrow in select theaters and expands in October.
