{"id":847537,"date":"2026-09-14T14:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847537\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T14:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:04:09","slug":"your-mother-your-mother-your-mother-review-mahershala-ali-excels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847537\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Review: Mahershala Ali Excels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSince winning two Oscars in three years less than a decade ago, Mahershala Ali<\/a> has bided his time as one of Hollywood\u2019s great untapped commodities. Not counting some disposable franchise support duty, he\u2019s had only a fine performance in the gloopy sci-fi \u201cSwan Song\u201d to remind us what he can do, while his proposed succession of Wesley Snipes in a new \u201cBlade\u201d film languished in development purgatory. Following his propulsive fiction debut \u201cMogul Mowgli,\u201d meanwhile, documentary-schooled filmmaker Bassam Tariq<\/a> was likewise snagged up in that star-crossed reboot \u2014 hardly a fresh enough prospect to hold that much talent in limbo. The very happy upshot of that disappointment, however, arrives with \u201cYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother<\/a>,\u201d clearly the film that Tariq and Ali were meant to make together all along: a dazzling hardboiled action drama that boasts at least as much lethally fancy swordplay as \u201cBlade,\u201d and significantly more ideas. <\/p>\n

\n\tTaking the hoariest of premises within the genre \u2014 jaded hitman is forced to take one last job \u2014 and significantly complicating it with finely drawn family drama and, most unusually and unexpectedly, a nuanced examination of Islamic faith in modern America, Tariq\u2019s sophomore feature scales up everything that was auspicious about \u201cMogul Mowgli,\u201d from its rich sense of cultural community to its oily, humidly saturated visuals. What that film didn\u2019t foretell was the Pakistani-American director\u2019s fluent command of dizzy action setpieces. With a raw physicality that takes its cue from the protagonist\u2019s principled rejection of firearms, \u201cYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother\u201d is as satisfying a cinematic brawlathon as anything seen in the multiplex of late \u2014 and deserves a substantial theatrical audience when Amazon releases it Stateside on Sept. 25, following a Toronto festival bow.<\/p>\n

\n\tFar from the obscenity you might expect from a film in its genre lane, the striking title instead refers to a well-known Islamic hadith \u2014 one that has the Prophet Muhammad answering the question of who is most deserving of our best companionship with \u201cyour mother,\u201d repeated twice before anyone else gets a look-in. Quoted over a black screen at the outset of the film, it\u2019s an indication of where its priorities ultimately lie: with family and domesticity, macho action trappings notwithstanding. A brutal opening sequence introduces Latif (Ali) executing a brutal, skull-cracking murder in a public bathroom. A highly skilled contract killer, Latif is also a devoted family man and practicing Muslim who reconciles these incompatible personae with a firm resolve never to use guns \u2014 just fearsomely large swords \u2014 and to only kill people he deems morally deserving of that punishment.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of this exactly puts him in line for either Muslim or Father of the Year, but times are tough for the family, who live in a cramped, overheated condo in an unlovely Texan town. They get tougher still with the untimely death of Latif\u2019s wife, leaving him to care for their three children, responsible teenager Fatiha (Adia, in a superb big-screen debut), fanciful eight-year-old Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and infant Aziza. Reevaluating his priorities in life, he vows to go straight; problem is, killing is his most marketable skill. When his frequent employer Mike (Laith Nakli), a crime boss and fellow Muslim, enlists him to save the hide of his scumbag nephew Haddy (Abubakr Ali), he\u2019s ultimately in no position to refuse.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a job that pulls him into the equally unappealing worlds of Haddy, an online pornographer whose furry-adjacent videos count the otherwise wholesome Fatiha among their viewers, and Hwan Yoon (a gold-grilled, Stetson-wearing John Cho, having a ball), a Korean-American pastor and ex-Marine whose brand of evangelical Christianity is heavy on patriotism and gun worship and light on more humane values. Both men are tussling for the soul of sex worker Fugazi (Tiffany Boone), though Latif has a rather more practical interest in her: She happens to be lactating, and the formula-resistant Aziza is in need of breast milk. The underworld concerns of who owes what to whom are backgrounded in Tariq\u2019s tight, terse script; the urgent, everyday stakes of parental responsibility and survival are pushed to the fore, and the film is all the more compelling for that choice.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that \u201cYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother\u201d doesn\u2019t have a lot of fun along the way. The combat scenes, frequently pitting Latif\u2019s sharpened steel against more popular American weaponry, are staged with whirling verve, wit and, best of all, balletic coherence. Editor Cam McLauchlin never cuts them into mere blitzes of limbs and blood, though DP Katelin Arizmendi\u2019s acidic palette of yellows, greens and corporeal streaks of red does lend the realism a kind of pop-art splendor. A climactic showdown in a sprawling, hideously gilded McMansion is both spectacular and absurd, as Latif is all but impossibly outnumbered against a veritable MAGA army.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut impossible is where the film\u2019s deeper engagement with faith and grace sets in: never dully or piously, but connected, like everything else here, to Latif\u2019s opposing roles as a fighter and a father. To his children, in particular the devout Qadir, he argues for a looser interpretation of Islamic practice and prayer, adjusted to their extraordinary circumstances; he\u2019s surprised by their pushback, as they hold him sternly to account. <\/p>\n

\n\tAli is remarkable in a role ideally tailored to his potently still screen presence (potently still, that is, when he\u2019s not in kinetic killing mode), his composure conveying either nurturing calm or cool-blooded danger as the scene requires. And we see that inherited stoic reserve in Adia\u2019s constantly watchful performance, which makes of Fatiha a conscience figure both innocent and weary before her time. These are rare, soulful dynamics to enjoy in a film also at least partially dedicated to the visceral thrills of onscreen carnage; \u201cYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother\u201d holds these conflicts in balance, and prays on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since winning two Oscars in three years less than a decade ago, Mahershala Ali has bided his time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[358143,88,21704,206,358144],"class_list":["post-847537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bassam-tariq","tag-entertainment","tag-mahershala-ali","tag-movies","tag-your-mother-your-mother-your-mother"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}