Trigger Warning could sound just like the title of 10 totally different comedians’ worst stand-up particular, but it surely’s really the modest combustion that outcomes when three distinct however associated kinds of motion thrillers collide in a single Netflix film. It’s partly an airport-novel-style, Jack Reacher-y story a few military-trained badass taking over a nefarious conspiracy and a small military of unredeemable goons. (That’s the one the place the title makes the second-most sense, after the dangerous stand-up.) It’s partly a kind of later-career motion films the place a recognizable star rebrands as a surprisingly spry kicker of terrorist ass. And most promisingly, it’s partly a townie noir a few lady returning to her sleepy hometown to analyze the suspicious dying of her father. Jessica Alba performs all three roles; she’s fairly convincing, however in all probability may have performed any one among them even higher if the film wasn’t waffling between the opposite two.
Alba performs Parker, a Special Forces officer first seen posing as an support employee to attract out some terrorists. To illustrate that she has an ethical code, we see her stopping a colleague from killing unarmed males in chilly blood; then, in a characteristically middle-of-the-road dodge, Trigger Warning has her objecting to this apply primarily as a result of the lads are “belongings” who hadn’t but been interrogated for info. (This is so you recognize she doesn’t need to coddle the dangerous guys by granting them human rights.) Parker heads to her rural hometown when she finds out that her father, proprietor of a neighborhood bar, has died. The native police, together with her ex-boyfriend and the city’s present sheriff Jesse (Mark Webber) aren’t certain if it was an accident, or a doable suicide. Parker involves suspect that it was neither. Could Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall), an authority determine performed by a reputation actor, have one thing to do with it?
Strangely, nobody appears particularly fazed by the truth that Parker’s pops saved a literal man cave inside an previous mining tunnel adjoining to his property; in some way, solely the actual circumstances of his mine-collapse dying increase anybody’s eyebrows. (Later, another person appropriates his setup, watching films through what appears like 16mm movie projected on a rock wall, sans display screen; this can be Netflix propaganda advocating in opposition to the theatrical expertise.) It’s all only a handy manner for Parker to run afoul of native criminals whereas Trigger Warning collects bits and items of the primary, good Rambo film, Reacher, Road House, and the final, dangerous Rambo film (amongst others).
Director Mouly Surya, an Indonesian filmmaker, makes her English-language directorial debut right here, and you may see a style artist’s sensibility crunch up in opposition to just-get-it-done Netflix expedience: There are loads of properly composed particular person frames that use vibrant splashes of nocturnal neon, or linger a bit of longer than is strictly obligatory, like a shot of the air visibly escaping from a tire in opposition to the evening sky. Yet these pictures are sometimes lower collectively so clumsily that the film feels prefer it’s tripping over itself – particularly early on, when awkward enhancing makes the actors sound oddly halting, with dead-air pauses within the dialogue. This smooths out as the main focus narrows to Parker preventing her manner by means of varied goons; the noir-ish angle, the trickiest of Trigger Warning’s three subgenres, is understandably the primary to go.
What stays is a serviceably unremarkable time-killer – the Netflix particular, in different phrases (no, I’m not speaking concerning the stand-up variety right here, both). Alba has a no-nonsense athleticism that makes her a good motion hero, and it’s enjoyable to see her dabble in a bit of little bit of Jackie Chan-style prop-fighting in a single scene, even when she and the choreographers aren’t wildly proficient at it. Occasionally, there are nods towards her previous as a tongue-in-cheek Robert Rodriguez heroine, silhouetting Alba as she practices wielding a machete (excellent for the star of, uh, Machete) and observing as she casually arranges her hair into battle braids.
