‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ review: Faith and fighting

Movie review

Even with some notable exceptions, it is still unusual to see a deeply religious character portrayed onscreen as three-dimensional, with complicated and conflicting motives. Instead, they’re frequently relegated to minor roles — a kindly adviser, a family member, a crazy guy on the sidewalk — or painted as singularly driven by their faith, as if belief erases human impulses.

So “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” written and directed by Bassam Tariq, is refreshing in its own way: a bloody action movie about Latif (Mahershala Ali), a Houston contract killer who is equally propelled by his dedication to his Muslim faith and his love for his children. His wife has recently died, leaving him with their teenage daughter Fatiha (an excellent Adia), preteen son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and infant daughter, who won’t drink formula. But Latif’s wife’s frozen breast milk is running out.

Latif first seeks contributions from the women at his mosque, which is led by Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito). But in desperation, he ends up casting the net wider. Through the “king of Habibi porn” (Abubakr Ali), he locates a breastfeeding sex worker (Tiffany Boone). But it turns out she has been “liberated” by Pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho), an Iraq War vet who’s become the cartoonishly over-the-top leader of a church that also might be a Christian nationalist militia. He wears a gold grill and a cowboy hat and seems to worship guns as much as God. And he’s ready to lead his flock against Latif’s people, just as Latif is compelled by necessity to make some painful decisions about whom he protects and how.

“Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” — the title comes from an Islamic hadith — portrays the underworld in which Latif moves as gritty and lurid, with danger and sin around every corner. But it is equally compelling in its depiction of Houston, one of America’s most diverse cities, in which distinct ethnic, cultural and religious groups live alongside one another. The film crackles with tension as a result. Yet it also occupies the fertile space created when people show each other love and mercy. Communities care for their own, even when sometimes that care becomes corrupted by people hungry for money and power.

At the center of the movie is Ali, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. (He and Tariq were originally attached to Marvel’s “Blade” movie, which never came to fruition; they brought some of their research from that film to this one.) He’s a familiar kind of figure: the reluctant killer with rigid morals in the rest of his life, pulled back into a web of violence for the love of his family. (Watching the movie, you might think about “John Wick,” and you wouldn’t be wrong.) But his religious devotion, so at odds with his work and his community, imbues Latif with internal conflict that’s written all over Ali’s face.

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With elegant fight choreography and richly textured images shot by Katelin Arizmendi, “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” lives a notch above most action films. While Ali spins and kicks and kills like a particularly lethal dancer, this is as much a character piece as a movie about killing. It is, however, shockingly graphic in places, which can slow down the storytelling; I found myself drifting at times.

When it’s in its rhythm, though, it’s a great story. Latif is haunted by a question familiar to anyone who believes in something bigger than themselves. Can we be forgiven for the worst things we have done? Does grace extend to our darkest hour? That he’s seeking answers to these questions in the strange, heightened world of an American city makes the movie all the more engrossing.

'Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother'
With Mahershala Ali, Giancarlo Esposito, Abubakr Ali, Tiffany Boone, John Cho, Adia, Jahleel Kamara. Written and directed by Bassam Tariq. 111 minutes. Rated R for violence/bloody images, language and some sexual content. (The New York Times does not provide star ratings with reviews.) Opens Oct. 15 at multiple theaters.