Trigger Warning 2024 Movie Review
Special Forces operator Parker (Jessica Alba) returns to her hometown of Creation after her former boyfriend turned Sheriff Jesse Swann (Mark Webber) informs her that her father, Harry (Alejandro De Hoyos) has been found killed in a cave-in as a suspected suicide. With the help of her local friend Mike (Gabriel Basso) and Special Ops tech specialist Spider (Tone Bell), Parker soon discovers that her father’s death may be connected to Jesse’s family consisting of father Senator Eziekiel Swann (Anthony Michael Hall) and brother Elvis (Jake Weary) as part of a large scale weapons smuggling ring.
Trigger Warning is the latest action thriller from Netflix and comes to us from Thunder Road Films who are best known as producers on the Sicario films as well as co-producers on the John Wick series. Thunder Road initially acquired the spec script for Trigger Warning back in 2016 written by John Brancato and Josh Olson, but it wasn’t until 2020 when Jessica Alba became attached to star when meaningful development came about with Alba instrumental in hiring Indonesian director Mouly Surya and having a re-write commissioned by Hailey Gross. Primed as Alba’s big comeback after a brief hiatus from the screen following her last major appearance in 2019’s Killer’s Anonymous, Trigger Warning is regrettably a very mediocre retread that sees Alba miscast despite the clear effort she’s giving to the role.
Despite my issues with Trigger Warning I actually do have some positives to point out with a fair bit of those going to the supporting cast. Gabriel Basso of Netflix series The Night Agent plays Mike who serves as comic relief/support for Parker and I’m pleased to say that Basso’s leading man potential he showed in The Night Agent also applies to him playing lighter roles with some amusing moments from his character/performance. I also rather enjoyed Stephanie Jones as Mike’s mother Georgia who despite not getting a lot to do did kind of have the Margo Martindale type air about her that I’d welcome seeing in more films. The action choreography is also quite good despite not having the 87North Productions stunt team resources with a lot of free flowing camera work and a minimum of cuts.
It’s unfortunate however that there are two major shortcomings to the film. Described by industry trades as a mixture of First Blood by way of John Wick, I’d say the premise has more in common with those mid-2000s direct-to-video films you’d often see the likes of Val Kilmer, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Steven Seagal do that blended into one another on the shelves of your local Blockbuster. Trigger Warning is better made than those kinds of DTV actioners but the Swann family are so uninteresting and without much real menace that it speaks volumes that the movie throws in a domestic terrorist militia in the third act lead by Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau’s “Ghost” just to pad out the body count. There is an attempt to make Anthony Michael Hall’s Senator Swann more hateful with one scene where he gives a whole spiel about “not being a racist” (which is rather clumsily setup) and it plays like a half-hearted Billy Jack tangent (or in this case Billie Jack? I apologize for nothing) that you almost wish had gone further because then it would’ve at least been somewhat endearing rather than serving as a lazy attempt at differentiating itself from its stock plot that spends way too much time with “investigating” the transparently evil Swanns.
Lastly the main reason the movie doesn’t work, namely its star Jessica Alba. While I’m all for actors playing against type, I think Jessica Alba shows a physical commitment to the role of Parker (with Alba noting her training of CQC and knife combat in several interviews) but playing a hardened special forces operator seems to be well outside her range. In many ways this can be seen as a recurring issue with Alba who’s so inherently “bright” as a performer that any attempts for her to play a darker or more abrasive character just come off as ill-fitting (one need only look at her role in 2007’s Awake as further proof of that). Alba isn’t the worst case of miscasting I’ve seen in action film (that honor probably goes to Judge Reinhold in Crackerjack 2) but Trigger Warning is a case where playing against the grain just does not work.
Trigger Warning isn’t without things to admire, but unfortunately the sum of the parts just do not work especially with an underdeveloped stock plot and a miscast lead.
