Taglines: Vengeance becomes her.
Trigger Warning movie storyline. Special Forces commando Parker (Jessica Alba) is on active duty overseas when she gets called back to her hometown with the tragic news that her father has suddenly died. Now the owner of the family bar, Parker reconnects with her former boyfriend-turned-sheriff Jesse (Mark Webber), his hot-tempered brother Elvis (Jake Weary) and their powerful father Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall), as she looks to understand what actually happened to her dad.
Parker’s search for answers quickly goes south and she soon finds herself at odds with a violent gang running rampant in her hometown. Unsure of who she can truly trust, Parker draws on her commando training and proves herself a force to be reckoned with as she hunts down the truth and attempts to right what has gone wrong in Swann County, with the help of her covert ops partner and hacker Spider (Tone Bell) and connected local dealer Mike (Gabriel Basso).
Trigger Warning is a 2024 American action thriller film starring Jessica Alba as a skilled Special Forces officer who takes ownership of her father’s bar shortly after he dies, and soon finds herself at odds with the violent gang running rampant in her hometown. It is directed by Mouly Surya in her English-language film debut, and written by John Brancato, Josh Olson and Halley Gross. It is produced by Thunder Road Films and Lady Spitfire. Trigger Warning was released by Netflix on June 21, 2024.
The spec script for Trigger Warning was first acquired by Thunder Road Films in June 2016. It was described as a female-led cross between First Blood and John Wick. Netflix later acquired the film in May 2020. Several castings were announced in September 2021, with filming occurring in New Mexico. Enis Rotthoff composed the film’s score.
Film Review for Trigger Warning
We’ve not seen that much of Jessica Alba on screen of late, the once-hard-to-avoid star (between the years of 2007 and 2010, she was in 13 films) mostly stepping back from movies (between 2018 and 2024, she was in just two). She took time to focus on motherhood with three kids to care for as well as expanding her don’t-call-it-Goop eco-friendly brand The Honest Company, which at its peak was worth $1bn, a persuasive enough reason to put a pause on Hollywood for a while.
But after stepping down from her role as COO, she decided to launch her own production company, now taking on her first bona fide lead since 2016’s little-seen horror The Veil. It’s a smart choice of both genre and platform, a Netflix action movie that should be an easy win, her brand of 2000s fame making her a perfect fit for the same viewers who rush toward the streamer’s latest Adam Sandler and Jennifer Lopez offerings. It’s likely that Trigger Warning, launching on a rather dead weekend for new films at the cinema, will hit a sweet spot, tapping into Netflix’s undemanding action audience who have happily made hits from a string of duds.
Positioned as a franchise-starter, compared a little ambitiously to both Rambo and John Wick when announced back in 2016, it gives Alba the opportunity to go from zero to 100 in terms of screentime, cropping up in almost every scene, an opportunity she would be less likely to receive in a wide theatrical release at this stage. She plays Parker, a special forces commando called back to her small home town when her father dies, an apparent accident that may have been a suicide that she’s convinced was murder. There are some shady types circling her, from Anthony Michael Hall’s ultra-conservative, anti-woke senator to his trigger-happy son to some local criminals engaging in behaviour she’s incapable of ignoring.
We’re in basic 80s action movie territory, quite obviously hinted at in one scene when a character watches and comments on a Chuck Norris movie, a barebones formula regurgitation that somehow needed three writers to stitch it together (John Brancato, Josh Olson and Halley Gross). In among their combined credits, films like A History of Violence and David Fincher’s The Game along with episodes of Westworld show that there’s a glimmer of something at work, and while Trigger Warning could have benefited from a script with a little bit more on its mind, it’s smooth and serviceable and at times even vaguely politically interesting.
The Reagan-era shoot-em-ups it’s modelled on were not known for their progressivism, pushing a rough red meat conservative agenda and while Trigger Warning is still very pro-military, it’s also violently against the racism and regression of Republican politics. Hall’s rightwing politician is a villain not just for his actions but for his beliefs, topped only by the film’s ultimate Big Bad: white male domestic terrorists.
It’s not quite enough to push the film into genuinely smart or noteworthy territory but it adds some punchy election year anger to Alba’s inevitable and involving revenge mission and tracks that it was made by a non-American – the English-language debut from the Indonesian director Mouly Surya.
Alba hasn’t always made the strongest impression as an actor but this mode works well for her, convincing both in her many hand-to-hand combat scenes (her weapon of choice is a knife rather than a gun) and as an old-fashioned movie star, light on emotional depth but heavy on charisma. It’s a pretty straightforward reintroduction but an effective one and while nothing here is distinctive enough to demand more from the character, there are many more worse sequel prospects, especially within Netflix’s franchise farm.
Trigger Warning (2024)
Directed by: Mouly Surya
Starring: Jessica Alba, Anthony Michael Hall, Mark Webber, Jake Weary, Tone Bell, Alejandro De Hoyos, Gabriel Basso, Kaiwi Lyman, Hari Dhillon, Nadiv Molcho, Peter Monro, Stephanie Jones
Screenplay by: John Brancato, Josh Olson, Halley Gross
Production Design by: Natasha Gerasimova
Cinematography by: Zoë White
Film Editing by: Chris Tonick, Robert Grigsby Wilson
Costume Design by: Samantha Hawkins
Set Decoration by: Susan Magestro
Art Direction by: Lauren Slatten
Music by: Enis Rotthoff
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Netflix
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Views: 24
