Mahershala Ali's two Oscars could cost him his first Best Actor nomination
In Bassam Tariq's film he plays a devout Houston hitman left to raise three children alone. Oscar forecasters love the performance, but few expect Amazon to pay for the campaign it needs.
Mahershala Ali is playing a hitman again, and r/oscarrace thinks it is the best lead performance of the year. A thread posted on 15 October asks whether his Best Actor chance is "really gone", and the most upvoted reply puts his Latif in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother ahead of Robert Pattinson and Tom Cruise. Another commenter, braced to be downvoted, adds Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling to the list of people he has beaten.
The director, Bassam Tariq, is a story in himself. Tariq was meant to direct Ali in Marvel's Blade and walked away in 2022, weeks before filming. The vampire film never happened; this one did. It premiered at TIFF in September, and Amazon MGM's Orion opened it in New York and Los Angeles on 25 September before widening in October. Ali plays a devout Muslim contract killer in Houston whose wife dies, leaving him three children, a job and a faith that do not fit in the same house.
The lead role he never had
Here is the odd bit of Ali's record. He has been nominated twice and won twice, both times for Best Supporting Actor: Juan in Moonlight at the 2017 ceremony, Don Shirley in Green Book in 2019. Two statuettes, zero leading nominations. One commenter put it plainly: "this is really the first movie that would make sense for a leading nom for him."
"As a two time winner, why is everyone sleeping on his acclaimed performance for a nomination, but salivating over 'never nominated' Scott and Pattinson?"
— a commenter on r/oscarrace
So the man with the shelf is also the man who has never carried a film into the Academy's main acting race. He is, technically, the overdue one. Nobody is treating him that way.
Sympathy goes to the first-timers
Best Actor runs on narrative, and this year the narratives are all hunger. Pattinson has never been nominated. Cruise has three acting nominations, an honorary Oscar from 2025 and no competitive win, with Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger sold as his moment. Damon's only Oscar is for writing Good Will Hunting. Ali's story, by comparison, is that he has already won twice. Voters don't campaign for a man who looks fine. Put bluntly, Ali will be the year's biggest omission, the best lead performance without a nomination.
Two Oscars on the shelf, and the first lead role worth a third may be punished for them.
The thread has a second explanation, and it's less flattering to the people doing the predicting. One commenter, who calls it the best performance they have seen this year, suspects most forecasters simply haven't watched "a story about faith with Black muslim character". It's an action film, it's funny, and it's missing from prediction lists drawn up by people who skipped it.
Read more: Tom Cruise's Digger is losing $245 million, and I'd bet it's the next Fight Club
Amazon's attention is elsewhere
Then there's the studio. A campaign needs money, screenings and a distributor who wants the trophy. Amazon MGM is the studio that dropped Artificial in June, and Reddit isn't convinced Ali is high on its list.
"It's possible if Amazon invests in his campaign, which I'm unfortunately skeptical about," reads one of the top comments. Fair enough.
What's left is the route the thread title hopes for, a critics' surge. Critics' groups start handing out prizes in late November and December, and a couple of early wins would make Ali impossible to ignore before nominations are announced in January. Without them, the Academy gets to admire the performance from a distance, then hand his place to someone who hasn't won yet.
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