Mahershala Ali’s collaboration with writer-director Bassam Tariq has finally made it out of production limbo — and though it’s not the Blade reboot they were initially set to do with Marvel, you don’t find yourself yearning for that while watching Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. The film is much headier, spiritual, and morally nuanced than a Marvel film could ever be permitted to be, following the plight of Latif (Ali), a hitman who finds himself questioning his Muslim faith after the passing of his wife.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is like a lot of thrillers in that it doesn’t compromise its momentum, but the paths it takes to get to its final showdown are delightfully subversive. Latif spends more time searching for breast milk for his infant daughter, Zizi, than taking on the next job offered up by his handler, Mike (Laith Nakli). As if by some cruel twist of fate, the quest he desperately needs to complete is inextricable from the one he’s running from. In finding a woman who can nurse Zizi, Latif comes face-to-face with his target, a gun-zealous mega-church pastor known as Father Hwan (John Cho).
Hwan’s “war on porn” has him hunting Mike’s nephew, Hatty (Abubakr Ali), the purveyor of “halal” adult content. Latif’s refusal to give Hatty up sends a whole world of hurt crashing down around him and his family. Eventually, he decides to put an end to it the only way he knows how: with his trusted machete and his talent for “punishment without mercy.” What makes Your Mother so brilliant, however, is the pivot Tariq takes to subvert this “one last job,” delivering a spiritual reckoning for both his reluctant hero and fervid villain.
Spoilers ahead for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s ending, explained
Mahershala Ali as Latif in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
Orion Pictures
Latif is mostly looking out for himself and his three kids in the first half of Your Mother, but he finds that he needs Hatty’s help finding a woman who can nurse Zizi. He’s shocked to learn that she’s a recent convert at Hwan’s church, and the strip club she’s chosen to meet Latif is a newly converted church. Though Latif and Hatty (who was tied up in the backseat of Latif’s van) initially escape Hwan and his followers, they catch up with them not hours later. As Latif has his kids to protect, he allows Hwan to abduct Hatty — which sends Mike and his goons right to his doorstep. Latif leaves body after body in his wake trying to get his kids out of Houston; his daughter Fatiha (Adia) and son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) both witness the darker instincts he’s spent years trying to hide.
Eventually, after Latif’s imam (Giancarlo Esposito) is murdered by Hwan’s vengeful followers, it’s clear he has to stop running and put an end to the cycle of violence. He drops his kids off at his brother’s house and heads to Hatty’s mansion, where he finds Hwan and his congregation holding an impromptu worship service, and Hatty strapped to a chair with saran wrap. Hwan makes halfhearted amends for the death of Abdul Malik, telling Latif that he forgives him for all his transgressions. It’s appropriately patronizing and, Tariq says, the absolute last thing Latif wants to hear in that moment.
“At that moment… you think you are irredeemable,” Tariq tells Inverse of Latif’s headspace. “You have yelled at your kids, your daughter has seen you murder people, you are a monster in her eyes at this moment… Then you got this guy that’s like, ‘I forgive you.’ You don’t want forgiveness from him. You want to know that your children still love you.”
An unexpected payoff
Hwan and Latif’s showdown is more spiritual than it is physical.
Orion Pictures
After Latif’s stilted farewell with his kids, reconciliation — or even a reunion — feels unlikely. He’s a formidable assassin, but he’s also essentially brought a sword to a gunfight. Even when he unsheaths his blade (ha) and unleashes his pent-up wrath on Hwan’s henchmen, his advantage is short-lived. Hwan quickly gains the upper hand and shoots Latif several times in the back. Latif falls to his knees, praying in earnest for the first time. He then seems to breathe his last, signaling victory for Hwan and his church.
What happens next is the kind of twist that’s more or less open to interpretation: per Tariq, some believe that Latif truly dies in this moment, with the rest of Your Mother taking place in the afterlife. It’s not a bad reading, per se, “because in a way it’s like, why is it that we have to only have a happy ending in this life?” Tariq asks. “For us to think that all happiness just happens in this life is really dangerous. I think when you move courageously, and you do things that are right in this life, they will pay off in ways that you don’t understand.”
Of course, that’s just one take on Latif’s ending. “What I think was my first intention — and when I spoke with Mahershala, and I think this is what we believed — was that he witnesses his daughter praying for him,” Tariq says. Latif, face pressed to the floor in a praying posture, somehow peers through the veil and sees Fatiha (who was previously grappling with her own faith) pleading for her father’s life. It means so much more to him than Hwan’s hollow claims of forgiveness.
“At that moment, when he is… in this state where he is blessed with this miracle of seeing his daughter praying for him and saying, ‘Bring Baba home,’ it’s like, ‘Sh*t, I’m going to get up.’”
Your Mother is about two men witnessing a miracle and finding parallels in their belief.
Orion Pictures
And get up he does. Latif rises again — much to the shock of Hwan, who survived his own near-death experience decades prior. Hwan believes his mother’s prayers brought him back to the land of the living, so to see Latif get a similar miracle humbles him instantly. This moment effectively washes away the bad blood between the two men, giving them more common ground than they’d have admitted before.
“It’s very satisfying to see these two guys who were at each other’s throats walking shoulder to shoulder sitting in the same moment,” John Cho tells Inverse. He’s referring to their final exchange where, even as Latif stumbles out of Hatty’s mansion, Hwan follows him out, asking him who’s praying for him. “The staging of that was initially more face-to-face, confronting each other. And we talked and said, ‘I think we have to stage it in a way where they’re literally going in the same direction.’”
Though they eventually go their separate ways, it’s a beautiful moment of acknowledgement for both Latif and Hwan. These are two men who have justified their bloodshed with their faith, albeit in different ways, but both are capable of the same kind of grace. It’s what makes it possible for Latif to return to his kids and embrace a clean slate — and, ideally, what will influence Hwan to give up his crusade. That they both walk away unscathed is the biggest surprise in Your Mother, but it’s exactly what sets the film apart from any film like it. “They had to meet and both be confronted with a divine moment,” Cho says — and in doing so, we in the audience get to embrace that divinity, too.
