Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother: It’s About… a Dad!

By Chris Knight

Rating: B

Lest you think this is a film about an angry New York cabbie, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother explains its odd title early on. It’s from an Islamic story in which the Prophet Muhammad is asked whom is most deserving of respect, and he replies, “Your mother.” Then who? Same. Then? Ditto. And then? “Your father.”

Enter Mahershala Ali as Latif, devoted father of three and an assassin. (And to think they could have called the film HitDad.) After a violent opening to demonstrate his work habits, he goes home to news that his wife has died.

Now he’s got to kill people but also look after flippant teen Fatiha (Adia), rambunctious eight-going-on-18-year-old Qadir (Jahleel Kamara), and an infant daughter whose allergy to formula sets up one of the more unusual MacGuffins in modern moviemaking — Latif needs to find breast milk, and quickly. The kid’s hungry!

With all that setup you could be forgiven for expecting a looney shoot-em-up along the lines of 2007’s Shoot ’Em Up, which also featured lactation and killing.

But while there are moments of hilarity amid the violent set pieces, writer-director Bassam Tariq’s overall tone is — well, all over the tone. Earnest one moment, oddball the next, with a pan-religious cast that includes a pair of next-door Mormons and John Cho as Hwan Moon (or "kimchi Jesus” as one character insists on calling him), a charismatic Christian Evangelist.

I enjoyed his character, but he does seem to have wandered in from another movie, given his over-the-top performance. Maybe that’s Tariq’s fault, but maybe it’s not all his fault either. After all, he was originally signed on to direct Ali in a reboot of the Blade franchise, and Your Mother came together out of the ashes of that project, with Ali already well versed in swordplay and itching for action.

Critics were itching too, and Your Mother topped the Toronto Star’s poll of most anticipated Toronto International Film Festival titles among industry insiders.

It came out of its world premiere at TIFF with decent reviews, but a closer look finds praise for components of the movie rather than the entire package. My own TIFF capsule review, filed from the trenches, deemed it “wobbly,” “entertaining,” and “uneven.”

Second thoughts only strengthen that verdict. Ali and Cho are both great, though they clash mightily — both physically and emotionally — in their shared scenes.

Bravo to Tariq’s Muslim milieu, but I wish he had done a better job of convincing me that he understands the religion more than I. Maybe he does, but I wasn’t feeling it. Aside from that “your mother” parable, I didn’t learn a thing.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Directed by Bassam Tariq. Starring Mahershala Ali and John Cho. Opening at Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox October 8 and in theatres October 9.