Jessica Alba goes full metal jacket in Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s Hispanic-themed action thriller “Trigger Warning” and shows she is no slouch when it comes to fighting. Our resourceful heroine disarms a chainsaw wielding madman when he tries to carve up her. Later, she tangles with ruthless domestic terrorists selling high-tech, military-grade weapons from a nearby Army Depot! As a U.S. Special Forces commando with combat experience galore, Parker (Jessica Alba of “Sin City”) takes a leave of absence to go home and attend her father’s funeral. During a bullet-riddled shootout in the scorching sands of Syria’s Badiyat al-Sham Desert, she had received the phone call from her former high school sweetheart, Sheriff Jesse Swann (Mark Webber of “Green Room”), about her dad’s tragic death. When she meets with him at the Swann County Sheriff’s Department, Jesse hands her the suicide note her father Harry (Alejandro De Hoyos of “The Contractor”) left behind on his bedside nightstand. According to Jesse, Parker’s father killed himself with a live hand grenade in a mine shaft he had been excavating when he wasn’t operating his own bar. Reservations notwithstanding, Parker concedes her father’s death as accidental.
Later, after she discovers weapons have gone missing from the local U.S. Army armory, she changes her mind about her dad’s death. Meantime, she encounters Jesse’s father, incumbent conservative Senator Ezekiel Swann (Anthony Michael Hall of “The Breakfast Club”), on the campaign trail. Eventually, she learns the senator has a gunnery range on his estate and allows his house guests to blow holes in the targets in his backyard. Not surprisingly, the weapons are government-issue! Earlier, she had seen Senator Swann’s obnoxious younger son, Elvis (Jake Weary of “Animal Kingdom”), obliterate a Mexican taco wagon with a shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Now, Parker has second thoughts about her dad’s demise. She learns Senator Swann is up to his eyeballs in a conspiracy to sell million-dollar, high-tech weaponry because he needs the dough his illegal arms sales generate to fund his re-election campaign. Meantime, Elvis has stashed some of those weapons in Harry’s cave. When Harry discovered them, Elvis murdered him and covered up his death as a suicide. By this time, Parker has notified a shady colleague at the CIA, code-named ‘Spider’ (Tone Bell of “Dog Days”), look into this treachery.
The villains try to kill Parker and they burn down Harry’s tavern. Parker tosses one miscreant off a second story balcony into the writhing inferno. Jesse arrests Parker for attempting to kill Elvis and cuffs her to a jail cell. A standard-issue ritual torture scene ensues with Ezekiel and his sons roughing Parker up until she reveals she has video evidence connecting them not only to her father’s murder but also to the theft of those Army weapons. Apparently, Elvis thought Harry’s surveillance cameras were not documenting his skullduggery. As it turns out, those cameras recorded evidence of their nefarious deeds and dumped them off-site for safekeeping! Now, Parker must break out of jail before they kill her. Worse, she is appalled to learn Jesse looked the other way when Ezekiel and Elvis were smuggling military ordinance. When Jesse tried earlier to convince her to agree to a cover-up, Parker had refused.
Mind you, there’s plenty of rough and tumble gymnastic action with Alba reliving her “Dark Angel” days when she takes down guys twice her size. Scenarists John Brancato of “The Game” and Josh Olson of “A History of Violence” penned the by-the-numbers screenplay which “Babysitters” scribe Halley Wegryn Gross rewrote. Altogether, they have churned out a predictable but entertaining boilerplate actioneer that gives Alba a chance to play rough. She wields a machete with considerable flourish as it if were a steel tipped fan. Of course, nothing is easy for our redoubtable heroine as she struggles to get to the bottom of her father’s death. Jesse finds himself caught in the middle between his arrogant brother Elvis and his unsavory father. Elvis has brokered a deal with people who are on the classified FBI’s terrorist list. Once our heroine realizes her father was murdered, she sets out to exact vengeance. At one point, she confronts Jesse and urges him to turn himself, the senator, and his younger brother into the authorities. Predictably, family ties outweigh the law, and Jesse goes along with his father. Earlier, he had tried to bribe Parker by buying her property. Mind you, Parker was no more going to sell than Jesse was going to make it simple for her to do.
“Trigger Warning” had such a troubled production history, and Netflix kept it on the shelf for three years. Meantime, Alba had been absent from the screen for five years. Her 2019 thriller “Killers Anonymous” (2019) was her last theatrical film. Now, she looks far more mature. The action choreography of the close-quarter combat scenes looks plausible. Parker’s willingness to hurl herself into breech and fight the Swann family says a lot about her tenacity. She is like a mongoose when she goes after them. As a murder mystery revenge thriller, “Trigger Warning” makes the grade. Comparably, it is not as violent as “Peppermint” (2018) with Jennifer Garner. Happily, Surya doesn’t waste time with comic relief, and she maintains enough momentum so the action doesn’t dawdle. The basic plot is no great shakes. The death of a loved one that prompts the hero or heroine from afar to say goodbye is standard-issue narrative convention. Of course, we know no matter how stiff the odds are, Parker will survive and her adversaries will grovel. The villains—the entire Swann family—both father and sons—lack the savagery of genuinely despicable villains. Indeed, they beat the living daylights out of Parker, but they don’t kill innocent men or women who stumble into the line of fire. Our heroine is fearless even when she has her back to the wall while taking a beating. Altogether, “Trigger Warning” qualifies best as ‘a guilty pleasure.’
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