Mahershala Ali puts the final sword in Blade’s coffin and wipes it off with baby wipes in Bassam Tariq’s faith-driven action drama
In 2024, after winning Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars for his meta-comedy American Fiction, Cord Jefferson got on stage and pleaded with studios to, instead of making an average run-of-the-mill £200 million movie – Red One and The Electric State I’m looking at you – make twenty £10 million movies and give the indie directors a chance.
With the likes of Obsession and Backrooms, which cost a combined budget of less than £12 million, out-grossing The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana, which come in at a combined budget over $400 million, this year I’d say we are heading in the right direction. Even with those successes, I can’t think of an example more fitting with this sentiment than Mahershala Ali’s debacle with Kevin Feige and Blade.
For those of you who don’t know, Ali was announced as Blade back in summer 2019, much to fans’ excitement. Would have been fun to see, but in one of Marvel’s biggest blunders to date the film never came to fruition. I know it’s been said, but what a travesty it is to waste nearly seven years of one of our best working actors. Feige, you have blood on your hands. It’s hard to pinpoint what was the final nail in the coffin for Blade, but between the numerous writers, Hollywood strikes and multiple directors, it was cancelled in July this year.
Fear not, as one of the directors attached was Bassam Tariq, who, after striking a good relationship with Ali, wrote a new script with him in mind as the lead. Which brings us to now and to me leaving my house in the freezing cold to watch Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. I have no doubt Ali running around slicing vampires would have been a resounding success, but would it have been worth the twenty £10 million movies we could have got instead? Would Blade have been worth Tariq’s faith-based action flick never coming to fruition? I don’t think so.
You can see the remains of what Blade may have been in Tariq’s sophomore outing. The way in which Ali moves and excels in the nail-biting John Wick-esque fight choreography for sure only happens with the big studio training budget. However, instead of following a larger-than-life story about a half-human, half-vampire supernatural killer, we remain grounded.
Ali is Latif, a devoted muslim and hitman, who goes on a desperate journey to provide breast milk for his youngest child, while trying his best not to get swallowed up by the hole left by their late mother, Khadijah, whose absence is felt during the whole 112-minute runtime. For all of its prowess and confident demeanour when it comes to wielding his sword, you can feel the anxiety’s and weight of the pressure of being dad
During Ramadan, he is hired for one last job; kill Korean pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho), an Iraq war veteran who is planning to ‘liberate’ unholy venues; namely Hatty (Abubakr Ali) and his porn studio mansion aimed at ‘horny Muslims’. It’s through the volatile porn mogul and Hwan’s extremist ways where Latif has to deal with the hypocrisy of his actions in relations to his own faith.
Tariq’s portrayal of faith, survival, grief, grace and parenthood is earnest all while basking in the South Asian setting of Houston – a landmark in representation of Pakistani cinema. It should act as an important reminder to fund these £10 million movies from all different cultures over the lifeless £200 million ones. Ali, it’s good to have you back. Don’t leave us again.
- Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is currently in UK cinemas
