Jessica Alba plays Special Forces commando Parker, who returns to her native home to take over her father’s pub after his strange death. She learns there that there might be more to his death than first appears, and that it might be connected to dishonest local politician Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Ezekiel Swann.
First things first: The title Trigger Warning is just nonsensical. The implication of that term could be twofold: either it’s a warning about potentially upsetting content, or it’s a more literal reference to a gun trigger. Neither has a significant connection to this specific movie. Rather, it’s more like Road House meets Rambo meets action-thriller-Western, with a deep and enduring sensation that most of what you’re witnessing is bad and always derivative.
In the first scene, militants are pursuing an American rescue truck through a Syrian desert in an automobile pursuit. One of the aid workers reaches out of the window and pulls a few machine gun rounds. One character asks, “Do you think they know we’re not aid-workers?” You can see right away that this movie might not be the best choice for those who are sensitive to global issues.
It rarely falls short of a John Wick’s cunning or creativity.
Parker, a morally-driven, expert Special Forces commando portrayed by Jessica Alba in her first major motion picture since 2005, is one of those fictitious humanitarian workers. Parker returns home to her New Mexico town following a successful mission, only to find out that her father, who she loved and who once gave her advice to “never carry a knife without sharpening it,” has died in a tragic cave-in accident. It appears that he mixed up with the wrong crowd. As Parker tries to bring down the domestic terrorists who killed her father, she unleashes a wild and violent campaign of revenge that leads to a criminal plot that reaches all the way to the top—that is, the corrupt Senator of Anthony Michael Hall.
The first iteration of Trigger Warning was released in 2021. Though the reason for the prolonged wait for a release remains a mystery, the available data does not indicate that years of stringent, James Cameron-style quality control were to blame. The film, which is directed by Eric Brown, is produced by Thunder Road, the same firm that brought us the John Wick flicks. While the action in the movie is undoubtedly its strongest point, Alba gives her all in the hand-to-hand fighting scenes. However, it rarely avoids a Wick’s cunning or resourcefulness.
Mouly Surya, an Indonesian filmmaker, gives a very standard and basic directing. Zoë White’s cinematography exudes a television-produced vibe, characterised by gloomy lighting that gives the impression of having been shot in a cave, as well as shaky computer graphics and noticeable green screens. Almost every other sentence in the screenplay by John Brancato, Josh Olson, and Halley Gross is a cliché (“Go! Complete the task!”). Other than the occasional burst of action, there isn’t much to recommend this save that it can be difficult to notice when it does.
A bland B-movie that is unremarkable at first. Jessica Alba gives a respectable attempt at John Wick’s distinct style of cinematic retribution, but she deserves better material than this.