There is a moment early in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother where Latif, a devout Muslim, contract killer and newly widowed father of three, stands in a Houston grocery store, hunting for breast milk because his infant daughter refuses formula and will not stop screaming. He has just killed a man in a bathroom with a sword.
That gap between lethal competence and parental helplessness is the engine of Bassam Tariq's extraordinary new film, and it is what makes it unlike any action movie you will see this year.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother setup: A Muslim John Wick
On its surface, the premise invites comparison. A hitman loses his wife. Forces from his violent past close in. He must protect what remains of his family. John Wick with a prayer rug, you might think.
That comparison collapses within twenty minutes.
Mahershala Ali plays Latif with a stillness that is almost unsettling. He performs wudu before prayer. He fasts. He recites. His faith is not a costume or a quirk; it is the architecture of his life, and the film treats it with a seriousness that Hollywood rarely affords Muslim characters. When Latif kills, he is efficient, almost ritualistic. When he prays, he is genuinely present. The dissonance is the point.
The film's title comes from a well-known hadith: a man asks the Prophet Muhammad who deserves his best treatment. "Your mother," the Prophet replies. The man asks again. "Your mother." A third time. "Your mother." Only on the fourth asking does the Prophet say, "Your father."
Tariq uses this hadith not as a plot device but as a wound. Latif's wife Khadijah is dead. The mother is absent. And the film is, at its core, about a man trying to fill a void that cannot be filled, and learning, painfully, that he cannot be "supermom" no matter how many men he kills.
The craft: action as spiritual argument
Tariq, working from his own screenplay, directs with confidence that feels almost reckless for a film that could have been a straightforward genre exercise. The action sequences, and there are several, including a bathroom fight that rivals anything in the John Wick franchise, are shot with a visceral intimacy. But Tariq is less interested in the choreography than in what violence costs. Every kill leaves Latif further from the father he needs to be. Every moment of competence in his work is a moment of absence from his children.
The cinematography, by Katelin Arizmendi, finds a visual language for this tension. Houston is rendered as a city of liminal spaces (parking garages, cheap motels, fluorescent-lit grocery aisles) where Latif moves like a ghost who hasn't quite decided whether he's haunting or being haunted. The score, by Son Lux, oscillates between ambient dread and something approaching grace.
Ali's performance is, simply put, astonishing. He was reportedly "yearning" to do action on-screen, and the sword training he underwent for the abandoned Blade reboot pays off in sequences that feel genuinely dangerous. But it is the quieter moments that linger: Latif trying to soothe a screaming baby at 3 AM, Latif explaining to his teenage daughter why he can't just be there, Latif praying in a motel bathroom after a kill, the blood not quite washed from his hands.
John Cho, as Pastor Hwan Yoon (an Iraq War veteran turned evangelical cult leader with a militia and a conviction that God wants him to purge the world of sexual deviance) is a revelation. Cho has spent decades being the charming guy, the comic relief, the warm presence. Here he is cold, magnetic, and genuinely terrifying. As Slate observed, Hwan is essentially "an American Christian version of the jihadist," a deliberate inversion that gives the film much of its moral complexity.
The context: from Blade to this
There is a backstory here that matters.
Mahershala Ali and Bassam Tariq were, for years, attached to Marvel's Blade reboot. Ali was announced as the lead in 2019. Tariq signed on to direct. The project languished in development hell, with multiple script rewrites, director changes, and scheduling conflicts. Tariq exited in 2022. Ali finally confirmed he was no longer involved in July 2026.
Ali had spent more than a year training in swordplay for Blade, training that, in the end, had no film to serve. The disappointment was real. But as Slate put it, the very happy upshot of that disappointment "arrives with Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, 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 Blade, and significantly more ideas."
The film emerged from the ashes. And it is, without question, the better for it.
The critique: where it stumbles
The film is not without flaws. Its pacing, particularly in the second act, occasionally meanders. Some of the supporting characters (Giancarlo Esposito's imam, Tiffany Boone's social worker) feel underwritten, their presence more functional than fully realized. And the film's central metaphor, while powerful, is repeated perhaps one time too many: we understand that Latif cannot replace his wife long before the final act.
More significantly, the film's use of the hadith as its title has generated controversy. Some Muslim audiences have expressed discomfort with a sacred text being used as the title of a violent action film. The filmmakers have insisted that the film "does not deal with the hadith or any religious content related to it," and that the title reflects the theme of the "absent mother" rather than the Prophet's teaching itself. Whether that distinction satisfies critics will depend on the viewer. It is a legitimate tension, and the film does not entirely resolve it.
But these are the flaws of ambition, not failure. Tariq is reaching for something rare: a film that takes faith seriously without being pious, that uses genre conventions without being enslaved by them, that asks what it means to be a good man when your hands are covered in blood.
The verdict
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is not a perfect film. It is, however, an essential one. It is the rare action movie that understands that the most terrifying thing a man can face is not a gun or a sword, but a crying baby he cannot soothe and a God he cannot fully obey.
At the time of writing, the film holds a 95% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes across 17 critic reviews. That score will almost certainly settle lower as more reviews arrive. But the consensus is clear: this is a film that matters. It is the film Ali and Tariq were always meant to make, and it is a gift that the Blade that never happened made this one possible.
Mahershala Ali is astounding. Bassam Tariq is a director to watch. And Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a reminder that the best action films are not about violence. They are about what violence costs.
At Wusul, we believe that cultural intelligence means understanding not just what an audience does, but why they do it, and respecting the values that shape their decisions. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a case study in what happens when a filmmaker takes those values seriously. It is not a film about Islam. It is a film about a man who happens to be Muslim, trying to be a father, and failing, and trying again.
Frequently asked questions
What is Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother about?
Mahershala Ali plays Latif, a devout Muslim contract killer and newly widowed father of three in Houston. As forces from his violent past close in, he has to protect his children while learning that he cannot replace their mother. Bassam Tariq wrote and directed it.
Where does the title Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother come from?
It comes from a well-known hadith in which a man asks the Prophet Muhammad who deserves his best treatment. The Prophet answers "Your mother" three times, and only on the fourth asking says "Your father." The filmmakers say the title reflects the theme of the absent mother rather than the teaching itself.
Is the film connected to the Blade reboot?
Not directly. Mahershala Ali and Bassam Tariq were attached to Marvel’s Blade reboot for years and Ali trained in swordplay for it, but the project stalled. That sword training pays off in this film, which Slate called the film the two were meant to make together all along.
