★★½ (2.5 out of 5 stars)

Faith is supposed to guide a person toward compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. But when two people believe that God supports their individual actions, who gets to decide which one of them is truly righteous? A person can repeat religious teachings and speak about justice, yet still use those beliefs to justify violence. Eventually, faith stops being a moral compass and becomes a weapon.

Directed by Bassam Tariq, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother begins with a fascinating premise and an important question about religion, parenthood, and morality. Unfortunately, the closer the film gets to its conclusion, the more it loses its purpose. What begins as a promising story eventually becomes an incoherent combination of revenge, supernatural suggestions, and grand religious statements that sound meaningful without actually saying very much.

The title comes from a well-known teaching of the Prophet Muhammad. When a man asks who deserves his finest companionship, the Prophet answers, “Your mother.” Asked the same question again, he repeats, “Your mother.” When asked for a third time, the answer remains the same. Only after that does he say, “Your father.” It is a beautiful teaching about the extraordinary place a mother holds in her child’s life, and it initially creates a powerful foundation for the film.

Latif, played by Mahershala Ali, is a deeply religious man, a loving father, and a skilled assassin. After losing his wife, he must care for his children, including an infant daughter who needs real breast milk. At home, we see his tenderness, vulnerability, and desperation as a parent. Outside of it, he becomes a cold and precise killer.

Latif carries a sword engraved with the words, “Die before you die.” When we watch him fight and execute his missions, we may believe that he has already died inside. Yet when he returns to his children, he is fully alive. The contrast between these two versions of Latif is initially one of the film’s strongest ideas. Beneath all the bloodshed, the story also explores a parent’s ability to find a way back to a crying child, regardless of the darkness or danger standing in the way.

Latif claims that he only kills bad people. The film wants us to view him as someone on a righteous crusade, even though he is still an assassin who kills whenever he is instructed to do so. We never receive enough information about his previous victims, whom he supposedly saved, or why his missions should be considered morally justified. Instead, the screenplay asks us to accept his goodness without doing the necessary work to prove it.

That problem becomes impossible to ignore when Pastor Yoon enters the story. Yoon wants to stop Harry from producing pornographic films and liberate the women being exploited inside the mansion connected to the man who employs Latif. Even if his methods are violent and extreme, the reasoning behind his actions is understandable. He is trying to rescue women not only from physical captivity but also from sexual exploitation.

Yoon also believes his survival has a spiritual purpose, claiming that his mother’s prayers brought him back when he had nearly lost his life. This connects him directly to the film’s central theme of motherhood, faith, and salvation. But instead of properly exploring that connection, the film decides that Yoon must become the villain while Latif remains its hero.

Both men are deeply religious. Both believe they are following a righteous path, and both use violence to achieve what they consider justice. When their paths collide, however, they forget the principles they claim to defend and become consumed by anger and revenge. This could have created an intelligent examination of hypocrisy and the way faith can be manipulated. Instead, the film’s moral position becomes increasingly confusing.

Why are we expected to support Latif over Pastor Yoon? If Latif truly kills only bad people, why does he pursue a man whose larger mission is to rescue exploited women? By the end, the supposed villain has the clearer and more defensible purpose. The audience is left sympathizing with Yoon while questioning the hero we were instructed to follow.

The film then attempts to introduce supernatural elements and repeatedly delivers grand phrases that eventually become what I can only describe as “word salad.” These ideas appear designed to sound spiritually profound, but they fail to come together in a meaningful way. Instead of providing clarity, they make an already confused story even more difficult to understand.

Mahershala Ali brings emotional weight to Latif, particularly in the scenes involving his children. But even a performer of his calibre cannot solve the screenplay’s fundamental contradictions. The film wants Latif to be a loving father, a spiritual warrior, a saviour, and an assassin without properly confronting what those conflicting identities mean.

I tend not to write negative reviews, and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother was one of my most anticipated films. That is precisely why the disappointment feels so significant. It has an interesting plot, a talented filmmaker, a powerful leading actor, and enough ideas to become a thoughtful examination of faith, motherhood, exploitation, and revenge.

But having good ideas is not enough when a film does not know what to do with them. By the time the story reaches its ending, its emotional connection is gone, its moral argument has collapsed, and its central point no longer makes sense. What I was ultimately left watching felt like nothing short of a massive waste of time—and that may be the most disappointing outcome possible for a film that began with so much promise.