Mahershala Ali Puts His Skills to Work in 'Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother'

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade — or if you're Mahershala Ali, you make a movie that shows off all the fight training and stunt-work skills you picked up before Marvel screwed you over.

That movie is Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a strange, savage urban actioner in which the two-time Oscar winner gets his Liam Neeson on. Here Ali puts his years of classical training in storage in order to be a badass action hero.

Just like how Neeson played Daddy Bourne in the Taken movies, Ali’s protagonist pulls out a particular set of skills when his kids are in danger. He plays Latif, a recently widowed Muslim dad who can barely balance parenting his three kids (yes, there’s a surly teen daughter!) with his on-the-low wetwork for a vengeful Arab crime boss (Laith Nakli). His search for proper breast milk for his infant daughter gets him stuck in the middle of a war between a trigger-happy cult leader (John Cho, rocking cowboy gear, Johnny Dang Grillz and unshakable ooze) and a gonzo porn peddler (Abubakr Ali, obnoxious and punchable), who’s also the boss’s petulant nephew.

Ali and writer-director Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) came up with this dysfunctional-family drama when Marvel couldn’t get its shit together to film the Blade reboot Ali was set to star in. I could write a whole separate piece on how Marvel fumbled the hell outta Blade. You would’ve thought that — considering the way Kevin Feige and the other Marvel honchos continue to revive comic book franchises for their increasingly byzantine Marvel Cinematic Universe — they could find a way to bring back the first Marvel character to make major bank at the box office. But no, let’s keep doing Fantastic Four movies until we get it right!  

I’m sure audiences will see this as John Wick with diapers and a BabyBjörn, as Ali’s lethal Mr. Mom has to take down (or take out) anyone who foolishly underestimates this kufi-wearing killer. But Mother is obviously a pork-free retelling of Kenji Misumi’s Lone Wolf and Cub movies, adapted from the manga series about a wandering assassin and his toddler son. (The series also inspired Road to Perdition, the on-the-run hitman-and-son graphic novel that later became another Oscar-worthy vehicle for Tom Hanks.)

Even though he’s in Ghost Dog mode on this one, Ali still brings the steely resolve. His character stays stubbornly stoic, refusing to show weakness or pressure even when he’s heavily in over his head. Just like with the Lone Wolf and Cub movies, Mother is a pulped-out portrait of parenthood as a figurative and literal bloodbath (you think murdering people is messy ...), as Latif has to step up as a father — and leave his wicked ways behind — by going full papa grizzly.

As much as I admire Ali and Tariq for making a badass movie by their damn selves, Mother’s tonal weirdness left me kinda baffled. For a movie that’s predominantly set in a lurid Houston underworld that’s both skeevy and over-the-top, Ali and Tariq plow through it with the straightest and most sincere of faces. A movie with both AR-15-wielding Jesus freaks and porn stars putting in work for a “halal-certified” site called “Bang Akhs” should not be this earnest. 

I guess Ali and Tariq, both proud papas, wanted to show how parents have to keep their level heads on a continuous swivel, protecting their brood even when straight-up bedlam goes on around them. Much like parenting itself, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother isn’t exactly a fun experience. But you do look back on it fondly when it’s over, muttering to yourself, “Man, that shit was crazy.”