Pop Culture Happy Hour - Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Mahershala Ali’s new movie isn’t the Blade reboot, but it’s still worth your time. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother follows a newly widowed hitman who wants out of the game. He's also a devout Muslim, and after his wife’s death, he is forced to adjust to being a single dad to three kids, while trying to balance his work and faith. But his boss (Laith Nakli) has other plans for him.If you’re looking for more great movies and TV about parenthood, check out these episodes:‘Last Seen’ is a new spin on troubled detectives'Margo's Got Money Troubles' is a smart adaptation well worth your time‘One Battle After Another’ is revolutionary — and revelatory'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' shows off Rose Byrne's dramatic chopsConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's like, I'm a hitman, but I'm also a dad. It's like, yes. So, Marharshal Ali's new movie isn't the new Blade reboot, but believe me, it is worth your time. He's a hitman who's newly widowed and wants out of the game to focus on his family and faith. And there are some obvious cinematic tropes for this premise to take, but your mother, your mother, your mother carves out its own path. Ali is doing one of the things he does best, bringing humanity and gravitas to a complicated. figure. I'm Aisha Harris. This is NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, and I'm here with culture writer and critic Shemira Ibrahim. Hi, Shamira. Welcome back. Hey, Aisha. Happy to talk to you again.

Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. And also with us is Vulture TV critic, Roxana Haddadi. Welcome back to you to Roxanna. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad I have both of you here with me. So your mother, your mother, your mother. It's Houston, Texas, and Maharshala Ali is Latif, a devout Muslim, who also has... happens to be a contract killer. When his wife passes away, Latif has to adjust to being a single dad to three kids, which includes his teenage daughter, Fatia, played by Adia. She doesn't know quite what her dad does for a living, but she is starting to get suspicious. Latif's main focus now is solo parenting, to be exact, procuring breast milk for his infant daughter, not an easy task.

But his boss, Mike has other plans, he's played by Leith Nackley, and Mike currently has beef, with ex-military Christian militia leader, Pastor Juan, played to the hilt, to the rafters, 2.11 by John Cho. And he needs Lateef to handle him. The film is written and directed by Basam Tarek. And just a little bit of backstory, Tariq and Ali were both attached to the blade reboot that eventually got scrapped. And so sort of out of the ashes of that, this movie's emerged. This one is from Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios. So we should note that Amazon supports NPR and Pace's Distribute.

be some of our content. Your mother cubed, as I've been calling it lately, is in theaters now. I've been opting for your mother X3, by the way. You know? Yes, that's what I've been doing. Sure, sure. Y, M. 3. Your mother X3, your mother times three. Any of this could work. Because sometimes saying it all at once is a mouthful. But, Roxanna, we were chatting about this before we started taping, and you have some very, very strong feelings about this one. So tell us more. I do. I do. And I'm going to say what I said offline. Best movie of the year, man. I mean, to me, this is everything I want out of a movie. It is, I think, a very dense, introspective felt examination of faith and what that means for an individual person, what that means for an individual person with a variety of familial and professional and cultural. and just like human being responsibilities.

I love the headiness of all of that in this film. I also love that there's like a lot of violence in this film. I want those two things. And I just think the script, the action sequences, all of the acting. And I would love for us to talk about some people who are not Marcia and Joncho, who are both great, but this cast is so dense. I really started crying like at the title card and did not stop. Like, it just is incredible, I think.

I really have been, like, badgering people in my life to go see it. So I'm really curious. I'm so excited we're having this conversation. But, yeah, for me, it's like a no-notes. That's where I am. Yeah, yeah. I really do hope people see this in the theater because it looks immaculate. Yeah, I feel like Roxanna.

Shamira, please tell us. How are we feeling? Yeah, I mean, as someone who's normally an aggressive malcontent, like, this actually hits, all of my soft spots, right? Of course, as like a black Muslim woman that is also a part of something of importance to me. I don't want to get too far to the representation weeds of it, but that is definitely also significant in the crafting of this story. But John Wick with single father trying to get breast milk, you got me. All right. You got me. Right. Yeah. The theme of just a crisis of faith and then different ways and different textures in which

it is explored, not just within Islamic faith, but also offers nuance and a heft to the ways in which people sometimes orientalize the idea of the pious Muslim and how we actually go through and interpret our own relationship of spirituality. And I found that remarkably compelling. The acting was phenomenal out of this world and some really great performances. And the camera work just completely studying. One of those experiences that you'll really be deprived of if you don't watch it in large format, really great deliberate camera work, really great close-up shots that are still lingering with me and I'm still processing. I actually want to go see it at least one more time in the theater. So I really hope that people continue to see it.

Yeah, yeah. That was one thing that I absolutely noted. There's one scene in particular that stood out to me, one shot in particular, where at one point, Latif is, he's found someone to give him breast milk and happens to be a sex worker. I think they suggest that she is. I'm not sure they fully disclose whether or not she is or is not or like is in between. But anyway, he finds someone to provide his daughter with breast milk. And there's a moment in that scene where things start to go awry. And like the camera sort of pans downward and upward and tilts. And it's just kind of immaculate.

And I was like, oh, this is the shot. This is why we come to the movies. Yes, yes, yes. 100%. This is a movie I think that could easily, before I saw it, I think it was being kind of sold as. full-on action, John Wick, yes, yes, yes. But, like, in Roxanna, you said, like, it has a lot of violence. It does have a lot of violence, but so much of this movie is quieter than that. Like, it opens with the scene where, you know, Lateef is doing his hitman thing, but then he finds out that his wife has died. So, like, it kind of ends less fantastically than you would expect in this movie. And then it's a very long time before we get more violence. That's what I liked about this. The creators, like Maritula and the others have talked about it. how this movie was kind of on a budget. So I think part of that played into it. But that's the best

case scenario. It's like, okay, we can't have all these huge acts and sequences. So we're going to create more story and we're going to create more moments. And the fact, again, that like so much of the first part of his film is just him going around trying to procure breast milk. Yeah. While also having to deal with a boss and violence, it even finds moments of humor that, you know, are sprinkled in. I don't know. I loved how unexpectedly quiet. and intense this movie could be and how the violence was sort of, it was necessary, but it was also not the primary focus for the entire movie. Yeah, it is not a plot that is like action scene to action scene to action scene, which the John Wicks, bless them, I love them. That's what those movies

are. This is very internal, I found. I mean, to build off of your point, we go from this like really brutal bathroom murder to open the film. And then we go into the preparation of Latif's wife's body for burial. And, you know, my family is Muslim. My father has passed away. I was not part of that, but I remember that experience. We talk a lot about like the specificity. You get something really specific. It becomes universal. Like I think coming from a family that is Muslim, There's so many things that I recognized and I related to, but I also think the way that this script is constructed and the overall flow of the film, it really invites in a lot of different interpretations and a lot of different things to latch on to from the breast milk, which is like from the filmmaker's own lived experience. Right, right. To sort of this question of like, you might be in a position where you think, I'm not sure what my faith means to me anymore.

And how do you grapple with that? So yeah, I just think it's very fluid in genre and in tone. Yeah. I'm so curious to see the script because watching the film, there are sequences that are largely silent. And I'm really curious to see how some kind of really explored how to interpret that from the page. It is remarkably well acted in those moments of silence. Like those moments are sometimes even some of the densest where you see the emotions going through the characters and them slightly trying to interact. with each other and try to figure out how to communicate through eye language, things that are

very, you know, common in family dynamics, especially families going through grief, families trying to really maintain a sense of normalcy while everything is shifting around them. I really found that the small, minute ways in which they made the specificity universal so striking. Like, there are like brief asides at different points in the film that really make it clear, for example, that John Cho's character and Marhershala's character actually have a crisis of faith that may have rooted from similar experiences. They don't make it explicit, but there's an intonation that if you catch it quickly, you realize, okay, it's very interesting that both may have had a similar experience, maybe not exact, and their crises really mutated in drastically

different ways, right, where one person is kind of walking away and one person is frantically running towards it. And like the differing ways where they do that, even, you know, I definitely identified highly with the eldest daughter whose name in the film is Fatih, right? Which like, as a precocious eldest black Muslim daughter, like, I have to ride with this young girl. By the way, does a phenomenal acting performance. Adia is incredible. I want to see so much more of her actress. Yeah. Yeah. Like the way in which her performance is so grounded and realistic and honest and precocious and irreverent. And in the way that, like, just emerging teens are.

And also, like, you know, a little weird and goofy because, you know, the ways of which, like, a young girl trying to figure out their own personhood, feeling distance from, you know, of course, the ability to understand themselves as a woman because their mother just passed and having to rely and trust on the remaining parental figure who they have kind of a free connection with. Like, yes, you may not have that argument over, like, oh, I'm a Muslim girl who, like, is a little bit blasé about fasting, right? But you will have that as just anybody who's coming of age.

And making that story so relatable, it's such a tricky balance to strike. And she did it so well. Yeah. There is something about the premise of this movie. And, okay, I did not think I was going to be bringing this up. But a movie that came out earlier this year called The Breadwinner, starring the comedian Nate Bargettze. Oh. Hoh.

Totally different from this movie. And I have not seen this movie, to be clear, but I've watched the trailer. And the general premise of Bab is that like Nate Bergettze is playing like the very at this point just like completely overdone trope about like man suddenly has to watch his kids while his wife is not doing all the work. He's babysitting his kids. Sorry, he's babysitting. That's what that movie is. Yes. Oh no.

I have to babysit my children. My wife is gone. And like there is sort of a similar very, very distantly. But like there is this sort of like idea that. the mother is the center of the household. And now that she's gone, Latif's character in this film has to figure out, like, again, it's the breast milk. But then it's also like, how do I relate to my teenage daughter who, like, I rarely see because I'm usually out like being a contract killer. But it handles this with such grace.

It just feels deeper than that. It doesn't resort to these sort of men versus women tropes that it could easily do so. I mean, granted, the mother is kind of just this ethereal figure. And, like, that is one sort of trope that, you know, the dead wife, dead mother. Luckily, they don't have the typical, like, oh, here she is, like, prancing on the beach. Like, and flashback. And, like, it doesn't have those types of moments, so it avoids that. But it's still there.

Sure. And yet, I think there's something important about being able to see, like, a father and especially a black father who was not, like, absent for, like, him struggling with why he's been absent, how that conflict. with both his parenthood and his faith. And then seeing that all kind of come to a head and how like that whole dynamic of her like kind of figuring out, oh, you are doing things that I would never have guessed you were doing. Like, I don't know, there's just the way that this movie doles out that, that relationship that felt very natural and relatable. Absolutely.

So just beautiful, beautifully done. Yeah. I think one of the key elements that makes those nuances successful is that everything is kind of confronted with a very clear sense of empathy for everyone's kind of circumstances, right? And a lot of times, specific to like talking about Islamic realities or for people who are in the Umar or in the faith, especially in a hypervisible way, at times, there can be a performance of having to perform piety in favor of, you know, rejecting sort of like these Islamophobic tropes of what the faith is or can be. In this, it allows grace to talk about.

the ways that we fail, the ways that we struggle, the ways that there's no such thing as a perfect Muslim, the compromises we all make to make our lives the ways we can stray and come back without chastising, without constantly pilloring the people who are actually engaging in these behaviors and trying to figure out their own path for themselves of what makes the most sense. And so when you had these tender moments of, you know, a daughter really just trying to figure out who her father is to her because she just doesn't even know. We don't have a moment where it's like, oh, my God, you're actually the worst person in the world. Although, if that scene had happened, you know, it would have been sensible.

It would have made sense. It really is we are all wounded people trying to figure out how to make ourselves whole. And in that we may all make missteps in that path. And that is okay. And I can't believe I'm saying, oh, that's okay about a contract hitman, but I am saying that. Contract hitman. Latif is baby girl for me, okay? Like, it is.

All right. It's really fun. And not to oversimplify it, right? But like, there's a joke in that kind of Muslim communities about like Haram Halal ratios, right? You know, about just like the differing ways in which you kind of reconcile the contradictions for you, right? You know, and so there's like, for example, a common joke about how maybe a Muslim will drink, have sex, smoke weed, da-da-da. But God forbid you offer a plate of bacon, right? Like, you know, like everyone kind of has their arbitrary line.

And in the film, they really play around with that in, yes, dramatic ways, but in sometimes really humor. ways, right? Of like, oh, you're calling me a hypocrite, but look around what you're doing here. Oh, you think just because you called this haram, that makes it like okay and better than what I'm doing. You know, those sort of kind of push and pulls that are like just kind of poking and prodding about, yeah, we can talk about this as gravitas, but also there's a bit of lightness and fun to this about how like we're all kind of, yes, trying to be perfect, but there's a little bit of us, you know, I point a finger at you, four fingers are pointing back at me type of thing. Yeah. Well, we'll have much more about your mother, your mother, your mother. after the break. Welcome back. Roxanna, let's pick up with you.

Yeah. You know, Basam did do 30 mosques in 30 days, which was a project where he was traveling around and visiting all these different mosques. And I feel like that research is really baked into the fact that we see different mosques. We see different communities. We see, to your point, Shemira, like, how do they all sort of like interpret the faith for themselves? and the thing that's really beautiful is that each of them has a community that is like ready and sort of willing to help out Latif. I really appreciate that the movie is also sort of making this point that like you might have different faiths. You might not have a faith at all.

You might be an atheist. But there is like a baseline of goodness that we could be aspiring to under any circumstance. Yeah. And it's sort of that version like Shamira to your point of like, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. There isn't, right? But like everybody has like their own choices that they have to make. Again, specificity, universality. There's something super humanist about all of this, even as we are getting like, you know, murder sequences. Yes, yes. Like, you know, all that stuff. And I definitely think with Lateef, you see that in such

interesting ways because of course, like he's a contracted hitman, but his, line is that I don't use guns, right? It's very Batman-esque in that way. In that, right, he's like, okay, well, I'm going to use swords primarily. But there's actually not that many high combat scenes relative to the runtime of the movie. But I think the power of the training of Mahershala's sword work actually comes through not in the combat scenes, but in the way he handles the sword outside of those fight scenes, right? So there's one scene, for example, where they're walking outside of the apartment complex. And Marhershal's holding a, a shorter blade behind his back, right?

I'm not trained enough in sword blade and all the names of the types of blades, but a relatively shorter-sized blade. And just the scene focuses and closes in on his back and he just starts twirling the blade as he's walking. Like that level of comfort and ease, like shows so much of his capacity. Wait, before we ever get to him, you know,

doing a 20-on-one and everybody suffers, right? You know? Those sort of intimate moments in which he showcases how his approach to rigor and discipline, come through here are like remarkably poignant. And it actually reminds me, and I didn't think I was going to make this connection, but if we're going to talk about like cinematic experiences of like muscles behaving badly, you kind of have to reference Rami, which definitely brought it in Borg in like the last decade.

Yeah. But what I was really thinking about actually beyond obviously just Rami as the phenomenon that it was, is that two of the actors actually have presences from that show, right? So you have obviously Mahershala and then you also have Lath Nakhli. But in Maharshal's run on the show, there's like a very poignant monologue he does where he talks about how in Islam there's both the discipline and the purity of it internally. And the structure and the rigor of the discipline allows you to kind of engage in the divine pleasure that comes from it. And I think you see that sort of tension dynamic play out in the way that Mahersha embodies the character of Latif. And that no matter how far he is straight away from his faith, he is always kind of adhering to this very regimented, rigid.

sense of accountability and obligation that allows him to then what he chooses to release himself and, you know, pursue whatever indulges he needs to at the moment, as in murder, whatever, right? You know, allows him the freedom to engage in that, right? And I do think, you know, his reflection as a Sheikh in, you know, Rami and here, he's also a lapsed Quranic teacher, right, really allows you to see the ways in which faith is something that embodies how Mahershala thinks about a performance and how he reflects it on the screen. Yeah. I also want to bring in a bit, as we kind of hinted at earlier, that this cast is quite dense. So we haven't even mentioned Jean-Carlo Esposito, who's playing Abdul Malik, who is, well, okay, I don't know the correct terminology for what is his role. He's the Imam, right?

Okay, yeah. So, and again, that's to your point, Shemira. But, well, both of the points you were making, which is that, like, he knows what Lateep does. And while he is pointing the fingers and, is trying to guide him away from that. He's also accepting of him still. Like, you know, there's just a sense of community. You also have Tramel Tillman. Tremel Tillman, I will watch him in anything. He is so great. And we haven't even talked about Mike's nephew, Hattie, who is played by Abu Bucker,

Ali, who is like kind of the main comic relief here, I think. Definitely a very recognizable sort of figure if you've been around that sort of. Yes. Camara and I both were like, yeah, we know this guy. I mean, he's, yeah, he's kind of the source of the tension between Mike and the Joncho character, which is that, like, Hattie is involved with porn and the John Show character is very much against that. I do want to ask a little bit about that aspect of it, the combat between the John Show character and Mike and, like, how that all kind of meshes in together. How did that work for you in terms of, like, that sort of kind of obvious back and forth, but maybe not in the way it's executed?

What I found interesting about kind of the core conflict between the John Cho character, Mike, as well as Mahershal's character, is that as they go through the movie, they don't actually come to a clear resolution as to the moral stance, right? Amongst all three characters, right? Like, they all meet their respective fates, but there's no clear, like, this person is the right person and this person is the wrong person and this person explicitly has the moral upper hand, right? You know, I guess you could argue that Mahershal's character has the moral upper hand as a murderer, you know, but there's not necessarily like... Just by virtue of being the protagonist and like the main person, you know. Yeah, exactly. And it actually allows you to contend with like who is allowed redemption when everybody carries their own level of sin. And I think that's something that we all kind of have to reflect on at different points in our life.

And I think that's really what the ultimate conflict ends up landing at, not necessarily absolving or redeeming anybody, but saying that, they're worth being attended to. And I thought that was actually quite compelling. Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, John Cho's character and Mahershala's character, they both acknowledge, like, actually, no, our worldviews are somewhat similar. Like, we actually have, like, to a certain degree, the same amount of faith. We view our roles as protectors of the faith in the same way. And if there wasn't this like question of Haddy, and Haddy is like a, I feel like we should say that he is a content creator who is making content that is not very pious involving women. Let me put it that way. I mean, it's porn. Thank you. Yeah, he makes porn. Thank you. Yeah,

I really appreciate that. Yes. I was like, is this NPR saying, I'm not sure. We can say porn. It's It's a thing. So I do think that there is this really interesting tension between, you know, between these two men who, if Haddy didn't exist, probably, like, would think, like, oh, we're aligned. And I do think to go back to that scene with the camera work that you mentioned Aisha, like that these two men are having this discussion about faith and violence and who deserves to be forgiven and protected in like a strip club, private room that has been taken over

by the pastor's followers and refashioned into a church. So there are all these sort of questions of like, to me in a certain way, like religious colonialism that I think are also really interesting and like subtly there within the movie through these performances. And I don't know. I really like we could talk about this for a really long time. because there's just so much to dig into with the movie. Yeah.

What we are seeing, Meherciala go through is, of course, yes, making sure his family is good, but also processing his grief and trying to figure out who it belongs to, right? And who he's trying to blame. But it's very clear that he does blame himself, right, in the ways that he performs. And so I just think all those kind of particularities are just so exceptional.

And I also think that Mearsela has Best Actor nomination in the bag. I think that's coming. And so, you know, preemptive congratulations for your third Oscar-on-off. I mean, he's already got two Oscars, so I don't think you're too far off and at him at least getting a nomination. I do hope people do seek this out. And I think we all obviously can agree that this movie is very, very good and worth seeing, preferably on the big screen. It looks great. And Marathella is just, he's doing this thing.

He's doing this thing. Thank you to Marvel. Yeah, thank you, Marvel, for not going through. But I am okay with it because we got this instead. That brings us to the end of our show, Roxanna Haddadi, Shemira Ibrahim. Thanks so much for being here. It was great chatting with you both. Thank you.

Thank you. And this episode was produced by Mike Katzv, Kaden Mills, and Lenin Sherburn, and edited by our sure runner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in provides our theme music, and thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.