YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is one of those titles that makes sense when you see the movie, but maybe it’s not the best one for getting people to come see it. That’s okay. It’s not really for everybody anyway. But it’s definitely my shit.
How’s this for a selling point: when Mahershala Ali (ROXANNE ROXANNE) finally gave up on ever making the BLADE movie he’d been developing for six years, he reunited with the first director who had been attached, Bassam Tariq (MOGUL MOWGLI), to make an indie movie that would take advantage of all the sword training Marvel had provided for him. You want to see that, right? I sure wanted to see that.
I do think his performance in this might be influenced by how he would’ve played Blade, but it’s really not a BLADE-like movie at all. It’s a totally different thing I also love: what I like to call arthouse badass, though “arthouse” might be overstating it. I’m just trying to describe movies about badasses that are channeling more LE SAMOURAI, POINT BLANK and GET CARTER than, say, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS; crime movies with elements of action, done with a dry, indie drama approach, but cool. Movies like THE AMERICAN, THE LIMEY, DRIVE, RUST AND BONE, REDBELT, DESTROYER, THE KILLER (2023), A VIGILANTE, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD, HAYWIRE, ONLY GOD FORGIVES, EASTERN PROMISES, THE BOUNCER, SPARTAN, HELL OR HIGH WATER, and the king of them is GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI, which is an obvious influence on this one.
But Ali’s character Latif is less extreme than Ghost Dog. He says he has a code, but it’s just to not use guns, despite a military past. Being a sword-wielding hitman is his sordid secret life, not his identity. His primary concern during the movie is to be a father.
THE SWORD IDENTITY is a 2011 period martial arts movie that’s the debut of writer/director Xu Haofeng, based on his own book. He’s directed a few more movies since then and notably wrote 
