Almost certainly the first action film built around a frantic hunt for breast milk, “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” is a compulsively entertaining, spiritually searching thriller led by a morally complex performance from Mahershala Ali. And yet the movie’s central storyline hints at writer-director Bassam Tariq’s inclination to subvert his own brooding-antihero saga, allowing room for unpredictability and the slightest whiff of impish irreverence.
A look at a devout Muslim hit man whose wife just died, leaving him to care for his three young children, “Your Mother” draws inspiration from graphic novels and B movies while thoughtfully pondering faith’s role in an increasingly dark world. Ali’s mournful assassin is trying to stay one step ahead of his enemies and, likewise, the movie fights like hell to elude conventionality.
Set in Houston, “Your Mother” stars Ali as Latif, who is in the midst of slaying his latest target when he learns that his beloved wife Khadijah (Shakirah DeMesier) has died. The news was expected, but that doesn’t lessen Latif’s sorrow — or the anger of those in his life who felt he should have been around more before her death. His children Fatiha (Adia), Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and Aziza (Brooklyn Hughes and Jaxon Hughes) are unaware of his work but they seem to be the only ones, along with Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito), his mosque’s imam, tired of hearing Latif’s assertion that he’s merely avenging the wrongs visited upon their people. Abdul isn’t alone in condemning Latif as a hypocrite preaching the tenets of Islam while inflicting violence: Among the remarkable things about “Your Mother” is its lack of sympathy for his contradictions. No wonder the action sequences never seem exhilarating — Latif may be adept at staying alive, but the sanctity of his soul is another matter entirely.
Khadijah had insisted on nursing their newborn Aziza with her own breast milk, but Latif discovers that only a few pouches remain in the fridge and formula makes his baby sick. The hit man’s quest to track down nursing mothers lends “Your Mother” a peculiar but propulsive forward momentum while neatly indicting the macho stereotypes that usually accompany such action movies. Physically imposing despite rarely raising his voice, Latif is as lethal with a sword as he is with his fists — he refuses to use guns — but his helplessness at finding breast milk serves as a constant emasculation. Ironically, it also recalls Islam’s teaching about true masculinity being reflected through service and sensitivity, not brute force.
As Latif struggles to comfort his grieving children, who think of him more as a distant figure than a father, he must also navigate the fallout from his last job, in which he haphazardly disposed of the corpse. Mad at the mess Latif left him to clean up, his boss Mike (Laith Nakli) orders his prized assassin to protect his nephew, a noxious porn purveyor named Hatty (Abubakr Ali), whose sinful profession has put him in the crosshairs of dangerously militant Christian minister Hwan Yoon (John Cho). Latif loathes Hatty, who he unsuccessfully tried to instruct in the ways of Islam, but now he has no choice but to keep Hwan from killing the little jerk. Sporting cowboy hats and an amusingly cartoonish Texas accent, Cho plays Hwan as the corrosive embodiment of the religious right, he and his goons stocking up on automatic weapons in order to rain down God’s punishment on the wicked.
The conflation of spirituality and naked self-interest weaves throughout “Your Mother” as both Latif and Hwan distort their religions’ beliefs to justify their actions. But where Hwan’s Christianity is a willful, grotesque misreading of the Bible, Latif actively wrestles with his moral shortcomings. Bolstered by Katelin Arizmendi’s humid cinematography and Son Lux’s anxiety-inducing electronic score, Tariq inserts subtle reminders that this hit man lives in an America that is openly hostile to Muslims. (The film pointedly takes place during Ramadan.) Hwan might be a bloodthirsty lunatic, but in our country he’s still more welcome than the flawed but righteous Latif.
Chaos reigns in “Your Mother,” and not just with Latif’s fraught attempts to secure breast milk, which are portrayed as either comedic or dramatic depending on the scene. The fight sequences have an engaging messiness, the characters often fumbling around rather than delivering expert moves. And the plot careens from one incident to the next, sometimes landing on a random sight gag or odd digression.
“Your Mother” came together after Tariq and Ali failed to get a “Blade” reboot green-lighted, with Ali utilizing his martial-arts training from that aborted Marvel project. Especially during this film’s bombastic battle-royale ending, one can sense the superhero movie the two of them might have made. Occasionally, “Your Mother” indulges in genre clichés, such as gratuitous slow-motion and solemn pronouncements about the warrior’s code. But even then, the film feels energized by its bold mixture of pulp pleasures and weighty musings, operating with a bruising efficiency that Ali’s skilled assassin would no doubt respect.
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