Directed By Bassam Tariq
Starring – Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito
The Plot – Follows Latif (Ali), 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.
Rated R for violence/bloody images, adult language and some sexual content
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother | Official Trailer
POSITIVES
After Marvel Studios put an abrupt end to the collaborative aspirations of Bassam Tariq and Mahershala Ali, it was beginning to look like one of superhero’s greatest ‘What ifs?’, and while their days of working on ‘Blade’ are tragically over, the tandem team-up here conjures some of the ambition and artistry that could’ve found its way to the cultural touchstone of a franchise, beginning with the soulfully stirring direction from Tariq granting the film such a meditatively poetic atmosphere. Aside from the distinct visual pallet of Bassam’s helming conjuring these spectacularly colorful production designs, thoughtfully approached compositions, and pulpy grittiness, his single greatest achievement is in the genre-absorbing boundaries of his introspective material continually firing on all cylinders, despite a tonal spontaneity that deviates every twenty-five minutes or so, taking a calculated revenge thriller initially, and then evolving it into a thoughtful arthouse theological terrain, helping to appraise such merciful meaning to the empathetic designs of his familial characters, providing a boldly contrasting deconstruction of Latif’s Islamic spiritual devotion against a radicalized Christian nationalist militia, in order to examine how human beings can weaponize or manipulate faith to their opportunistic impulses. While the thematic material is quite hefty in its no-nonsense approach to framed depiction, the commentary never feels preachy or heavy-handed enough to intrude directly upon the value of the observations, instead cooking them to perfection in ways the contextualize so much of the volatility of the religious conflict, all the while crafting some intense action sequences along the way that aren’t flashy or artificial with its physicality. Between some clean cinematography from Katelin Arizmendi soaking up as much of sweaty swampiness of Houston’s multicultural landscapes, as well as the razor sharp fight choreography coherently capturing anxiousness and velocity their extended motions, the film provides meaningfully culminated pay-offs in between the emotional core and manifested conflict of this father’s desperate struggle to surmise stability for his children, in turn combining the strength and resilient side of Latif’s hitman with the no-nonsense restrictiveness of his parental guidance. On top of this, Tariq and the production vividly bring to life the realism and restlessness of this distinguished setting, not only with a firmly framed depiction of the colorfully neon assorted businesses and the claustrophobic confines of its inner-city project housing, but also the immersive blending of its many religious cultures, crafting a combustible battlefield that feels like it could implode upon itself at any given moment. Setting a film in a thoroughly documented city like Houston is easy enough without the elaboration of details, however Tariq’s own childhood move there from the turbulent boroughs of Queens, New York, comes across effortlessly in the ways that he blends beauty and bizarreness to the enacted air of his steamily sweaty depiction, offering up a juxtaposed hub of cultural contrasts to its geographic clashing that articulates it as several small towns culminated into one major city. When you combine this naturalistic brand of immersive imagery with the percussion driven themes of Son Lux’s sonically stinging score, you provide the necessary ingredients of urgency and suspense that are missing influentially from the circumstances of the sauntered storytelling, in turn providing this rhythmically endearing drive that perfectly mirrors the chaotic, dramatic stakes of the film’s hitman protagonist, offering up dynamic vocalizations that inscribe a deep emotional weight against so many unpredictable characters. Speaking of those characters, the performances are nothing short of courageously committed, such as those pertaining to Mahershala Ali and John Cho, who each articulate the powerhouse lead and eccentrically unchained villain, respectively. Ali brings a profound, soulful, and dignified kind of performance that not only commands the camera with a firm balance between the intensely physical demands of dangerously heavy action sequences with the vulnerable struggles of a grieving father, but also a dependable composure when his uncertainty is challenged the loudest, providing another masterful turn for the Oscar-winning actor who elevates everyone surrounding his Herculean efforts. Among those aided is most certainly Cho, whose departure here from his comedically-dependent roles, allows him to portray an over-the-top, gun-toting kind of alt-right religious leader is absurdly captivating in the best kind of ways, equipping him with a gold grill and a collection of cowboy hats that feels realistically embodying without coming across as cartoonishly campy against the advances of Bassam’s direction.
NEGATIVES
While plenty about ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ culminates towards an invigorating portrayal of faith and family alike, there are some counterproductively detracting aspects that occasionally trivialized my love of the narrative’s exploration, such as the long-winded emphasis of an opening act that requires more time and patience than expected before eventually investing in the plight of these protagonists. Considering Bassam’s deliberately dry approach keeps the storytelling from approaching confrontation until around the fifty minute mark of the one hour and forty-six minute runtime, it instead builds up the dynamic of the characters to articulate the grave disconnect between the children and their father, and though this creative intention is noble enough to make them feel like fully realized people, it truthfully does little to hook an audience with dramatic enticement, where it’s around midway through the movie before it begins unloading its best and most physically grueling sequences, leaving a lot of unrealized potential in an opening hook to immerse audiences seamlessly into the depths of the story. Speaking of story, the script also written from Bassam concerns itself with the introduction of many character-driven subplots during the movie’s opening act, only to abandon them by film’s end with very little of a pay-off or justifiable reasoning for including them in the first place. Without spoiling any of the film’s most vital details, I will say that individual arcs pertaining to Latif’s intentionally vague transformational backstory into a religious hitman, or his ideological conflict of his moral code constantly clashing with traditional religious institutions, left a lot to be desired in the overall majority of them failing to converge significantly towards the film’s underwhelming ending, in turn crafting an assortment of unfulfilling explorations that are shallowly singular to their one-dimensionality, leaving a lot of Bassam’s enacted ambition unrealized by a screenplay with not a lot of time and creative energy spent to utilize them accordingly. As for that aforementioned ending, it’s a bit of a polarizing one, as a grounded film pertaining to such realism and resilient grit throughout the entirety of its first 90 minutes makes way for a bizarre spiritual climax that might feel earned in the thematic impulses of the screenplay, but doesn’t necessarily make it the most satisfying to avoid a neat-and-tidy kind of resolution that thrives on the grandest of conveniences, crafting a jarring delve into divine intervention that doesn’t jump the shark nearly as much as it rockets over it.
OVERALL
‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ is a pulpy kind of religious parable that not only elicits a poignant character study of grief, faith, and family, but also captivating direction from Bassam Tariq that is worth believing in, regardless of some explorational shortcomings that grow to stall the emotionality of its spiritually stimulating climax. Despite its glaring flaws, the film surprisingly packs plenty of heart to its punchy action, elevated by the flawless talents of Mahershala Ali once again proving why he is one of the greats in contemporary cinema.
My Grade: 7.4 or B-