Trigger Warning (2024)
Directed by: Mouly Surya
Premise: A soldier (Jessica Alba) returns to her rural hometown to investigate her father’s suspicious death. She discovers a criminal conspiracy that links a local politician and law enforcement with domestic terrorists.
What Works: Trigger Warning is the kind of movie that Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal would have made thirty years ago. This story uses the template of a western. Trigger Warning is set in an isolated rural community complete with a crooked politician and a black hat villain and Jessica Alba’s character rides into town to bring justice. Understood as a potboiler action picture, Trigger Warning is acceptable if unambitious. There are some interesting ideas on the periphery of the premise. Criminals are boosting weapons from a United States military depot and selling them to domestic terrorists. At one point a character asks how these weapons could go missing. It’s a provocative question that has some real life relevance. The standout character of Trigger Warning is the local sheriff played by Mark Webber. He’s the son of a corrupt politician and the brother of the local arms dealer and he tries to reconcile his job and what he knows is right with his allegiance to his family. There is something interesting and tragic about his character that’s much better than anything else in this film.
What Doesn’t: Jessica Alba is miscast in the lead role. She’s supposed to be a scrappy soldier who has been through combat but Alba’s presence does not suggest the violence that the role requires. Part of Trigger Warning is intended as a mystery with Alba’s character discovering the truth about her father’s death. This isn’t handled very well. There are no compelling questions and details are revealed too easily and obviously. Trigger Warning has no thrill of discovery as the criminal conspiracy is revealed. The plot is often forced. There’s little build up to the violence. It tends to start and stop arbitrarily and without solving anything. Trigger Warning has a lot of supporting characters but no one is very distinct. The men are especially interchangeable. That’s partly the fault of a script that doesn’t give anyone a personality but it’s also a fault of casting and costuming. All the guys look and dress alike and they are difficult to tell apart. The set pieces of Trigger Warning ought to be the main draw but they aren’t competitive with contemporary action pictures. It’s all very basic and many fight scenes, especially in the ending, are so underlit that the action is hard to follow.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Trigger Warning is the kind of title that would have gone direct-to-DVD twenty-five years ago but a lot of those films were more fun than this. There’s stuff in Trigger Warning that hints at a more interesting picture but it remains thoroughly mediocre.
Episode: #1006 (July 28, 2024)