Grade: D+
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a somber, solemn, heavy-handed crime drama, with a plot that is set in motion because a recently widowed father of a baby is on a frantic quest for breast milk. It reminds me of 2024’s Jason Statham action vehicle The Beekeeper, where everything that happened was because a gullible old lady got scammed online. Screenwriters work in mysterious ways.
Mahershala Ali rarely raises his voice above a casual whisper as Latif, a hitman. While in the middle of a job, he receives a call from his daughter that his wife (her mother) has died unexpectedly. The baby can’t digest formula. When they go to the local mosque to see if there’s a breast milk donation, Latif runs into his boss, Mike, who has an assignment for him: to “take care” of a man who is after Mike’s nephew.
His kids have no idea what his profession is, which makes for a nice laugh-out-loud moment. When they’re hiding out away from home and the kids think they’re just visiting, Latif realizes he has to go back to the apartment to retrieve the breast milk in the fridge. As he prepares to leave, he pulls out a large knife, and his oblivious daughter’s reaction is essentially, “Whoa, you’re just going to get the milk, right? Why do you need that?”
Otherwise, I found Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother to be slow, dull, and lifeless. A climactic fight scene pits one man against 20 or 30 others, yet they have trouble taking him down, extras appear to be fighting each other, and bullets fly everywhere. That’s not the sequence’s worst offense. Something happens toward the end that took me out of it and depleted any benefit of the doubt I may have had. I know the film has an angle of faith and the power of prayer, but this development felt more like a convenience for the writers to bring about a certain ending. A boring-ass crime drama is still a boring-ass crime drama, creative MacGuffin or not. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, you’re bad you’re bad you’re bad.
Grade: D+
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