Yahoo Movies Mother’s Day ending explained
A tough female ex-soldier comes out of hiding to save the child who doesn’t know she exists in Netflix’s gritty thriller Mother’s Day.
You’d be forgiven for confusing it with the Jennifer Lopez-starring The Mother (also on Netflix), as the plot sounds pretty much the same. But in this Polish-language movie the action takes place in Warsaw and mum Nina (Agnieszka Grochowska) is even more brutal than J-Lo in her attempts to rescue her child (17-year-old son Max).
We learn early on that Nina is an ex-special ops agent also known as ‘Kikimora’, whose death was faked back in 2005 after all her unit were hunted and killed (it’s never explained by whom) and she had to disappear.
Her son Max was adopted as a baby and believes his biological parents died in an accident, but when he's kidnapped off the street by a bunch of thugs, Nina decides to come out of hiding to find him.
Nina’s nameless cop pal (who is continually blowing his nose, so will henceforth be referred to as Sniffy) manages to get hold of Max’s phone from police evidence. There's a message on it from Serbian baddie Dusan Dragan, who says he is the son of a man Nina killed and he will kill her son Max as his revenge. But how did he find out that Nina was alive and had a secret child? Sniffy guesses it was a government leak.
Unfortunately, the men hired to carry out the kidnapping are not prepared for a mother on the rampage. It turns out they're bad guys linked with human trafficking, drugs and prostitution, and are led by eccentric Woltmeter – a sneering brute who wanders around in a barely there harness and, just in case you weren’t clear on how bad he really is, keeps his dead dad’s head in a jar on his mantelpiece.
His minions, led by his deputy, Titus, are holding Max, but Nina soon finds them and shows how handy she is with a frying pan, corkscrew and even a couple of carrots (rammed in the ears, in case you were wondering). She and Max escape, while Woltmeter shows how displeased he is with Titus by applying a couple of tasers to his head until he’s dead.
Nina takes Max to a safe house – well, a safe bunker if we’re being accurate – and is careful only to let Sniffy know where they are. However, Max blows their cover by sneakily calling his parents, and more of Woltmeter’s bad guys arrive almost immediately to shoot the place up.
Despite being shot in the melee, Nina manages to despatch most of the baddies, and ends up in a hand-to-hand combat against Woltmeter. She eventually kills him, but by this point Max has run off and headed for home – only to be picked off the street outside his house again, this time by a different set of bad guys. So who are they?
Read on to find out who’s really running the show, what they want and whether Nina succeeds in saving kidnap-prone Max – but be prepared for major spoilers ahead.
Mother’s Day ending explained
Max is captured and taken to the Witch – a crooked Russian female diplomat who was expecting lots of cash from the now deceased Woltmeter – money earned from his various criminal enterprises.
That money is now in police hands, so the Witch tells Nina that she has five hours to get Woltmeter’s ‘goods’ back in return for Max’s life.
Nina contacts Sniffy and they meet in a parking garage – he tells her that the money she needs is at Police HQ, but as she walks off to get it, he runs her over with his car. She wakes up in a van – on top of all Woltmeter’s bagged-up money – and realises her old pal Sniffy is actually the man who orchestrated it all. He's the one who let Woltmeter know about her safe house, and he planned to steal the money for himself.
His two police accomplices walk Nina to a remote spot and reveal that Dusan Dragan doesn’t exist, and Sniffy got them to fake the phone message that set Nina on the path to rescuing her son. They hold a gun to her head with the intention of getting her to dig her own grave, but the next thing you know she is charging towards Sniffy, gun in hand, having overpowered them both.
He tries to drive away in the van but crashes, and the van goes up in flames – with all the bags of money inside. Whoops.
Sniffy stumbles away, while Nina heads off to the Witch with the two bags of cash she has managed to retrieve from the flames. Surprisingly, the Witch and her son let Nina and Max go – realising it’s all a big mess best avoided or their dodgy dealings will be found out – but as Max and Nina are being driven to Max’s home, a car crashes into the side of their vehicle.
Nina, Max and the driver manage to free themselves from the wreckage and, surprise, surprise, it is Sniffy who crashed into them and is now shooting at them. Max manages to tackle him from behind, and Nina grabs his gun. Sniffy explains the whole plan to steal Woltmeter's cash was so he could give money to his daughter for college, but Nina isn’t very impressed and leaves him in the street for the police to arrest him.
Nina takes Max back to his parents, and they say goodbye.
A few months later, Max visits Nina for dinner at her apartment. He asks her to tell him about his biological father, and about herself. Just as she is about to start, there is a knock at the door. Nina, armed with a knife, opens the door, and her own mother is outside. Her mother – who appears to be some sort of government agent herself – reveals that now everybody knows Nina is alive and Max is her son, they need to talk, as both of them will be in danger.
But what about our old friend Sniffy?
A final scene has him being interrogated by police, but protesting his innocence. However, he is shown surveillance footage that captures the bags of cash being taken by a group of balaclava-wearing men – and one man lifts his balaclava so he can blow his nose, and his face is seen on CCTV.
Looks like Sniffy has been caught red-handed – or should that be, red-nosed…
Mother’s Day is now available to watch on Netflix.
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