For a good part of the last decade, actor Jessica Alba has tried to mold herself as an action star, to varying results. Her latest attempt, in Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s Hollywood debut, Trigger Warning, streaming on Netflix, seems to be a step in the right direction. Clearly inspired by action classics like Rambo and Machete, Trigger Warning is a one-woman army show, with Jessica Alba carrying the movie from the very first scene to the last. However, well-crafted action set pieces against the scenic backdrop of western America cannot hide the glaringly bland plotline, poorly written side characters, and very generic treatment of the movie as a whole. Jessica Alba’s return to mainstream action would have benefited from a more violent treatment of the narrative, which is teased throughout the movie, only to turn out disappointingly tame in the end. Another aspect that will feel a bit irksome to action movie fans is that close combat scenes feel very slow-paced and clunky, when they really should have been brought more in line with the sleekness of contemporary action ventures. All in all, Trigger Warning is not a lean-mean action flick as the title suggests it to be; nevertheless, it deserves a watch solely for Jessica Alba’s courageous attempt to redefine herself.
Spoilers Ahead
Why did Parker return to her hometown?
The movie opens with a chase sequence in the Syrian desert as a group of terrorists tries to hunt down a relief van protected by American Special Forces, and Parker Calvo, one of the skilled soldiers, manages to singlehandedly take down three of the adversaries. As one of her comrades begins to shoot down the captured terrorists, Parker incapacitates him. As a pragmatic soldier, she knows the value of classified intelligence; she knows the fact that these terrorists in their captive state are more useful alive than dead. During the opening scene, viewers also meet Parker’s friend and team leader, Spider (character naming was done by a nerd, we presume), who seems to be well connected with the defense and administration hierarchy.
Like a bolt out of the blue, Parker receives terrible news, which at once prompts her to return to Creation, her hometown. While returning from the mission, Parker is contacted by her ex-boyfriend Jesse, now the town sheriff of Creation, who informs her that her father, Harry, has passed away in a cave-in accident in a mine he often frequented. Parker had a strong emotional bond with her father, who was her sole guardian, and navigating through the mines with her father since a young age is one of Parker’s core memories. Parker can’t help but feel suspicious about Harry’s death, and as she searches the mine after returning to her hometown, she detects signs of an incendiary explosion. It becomes clear that the cave-in wasn’t a natural occurrence, but she gets a bit confused and disheartened after Jesse insists that Harry might have taken his own life inside the mines.
What Did Parker Find About Weapon Trafficking in Her Hometown?
After returning to her hometown, Parker reconnects with her roots by meeting with her extended family—the people she and her father were close to. Harry ran a bar near the mines, which he had named after Parker’s grandma, Maria, and Mike, a young, resourceful dealer was the chief caretaker of the bar. Parker meets with Mike and his mother and shares her wish to sell the bar to some third party—an attempt to bury the hatchet on the past. Parker also meets with her father’s old friend, Frank, Mo, and others, and it seems her family has a good rapport with the townsfolk. Parker rekindles her relationship with Jesse as well, and she remembers how highly Harry thought of Jesse back in the day.
Tension starts brewing after Parker finds out Jesse’s younger brother, a local rascal named Elvis, has access to military-grade weapons, which he is selling to domestic terrorists, especially a notorious terrorist named Ghost, by inviting them to Creation through the dark web. The town sits close to a military depot, and Parker suspects that the mines lead to direct access to it, which Elvis has been using to secretly trade weaponry illegally. Parker suspects that Elvis killed Harry in his effort to operate through the mines. Outside the mines, a camera had been set up by Harry, which Parker hacks into with the help of Spider and asks him to recover the entirety of the recorded footage to get to the bottom of the investigation.
Jesse’s father, Ezekiel Swann, is a state senator who is trying to keep his position in the upcoming elections. Unbeknownst to Parker, Jesse and Ezekiel are involved in Elvis’ illegal weapons trade as well, as Ezekiel’s electoral campaigns are bankrolled by the money of domestic terrorists like Ghost. Jesse and Ezekiel try to stall Parker on one occasion, while Elvis tries to access the mines, but thanks to Spider’s vigilant gaze through the surveillance system, Parker gets to know about the present situation. She confronts Elvis, and a scuffle begins between them when Elvis’ crew sets Maria’s on fire. Parker fails to save the bar and, upon assaulting Elvis further, ends up being thrown into jail when she realizes that Jesse and Ezekiel are well involved in this mess.
Realizing that Parker knows their secrets and has the security footage of Harry’s last moments as well, which connects them with his murder, Elvis and Ezekiel start torturing Parker to pry out intel regarding her associate (Spider). Parker tricks them into calling Spider and manages to inform him about her present predicament, all the while breaking free of her captivity and somehow running off to safety. A physically and mentally drained Parker finds refuge at Mike’s place, as he and his mother take care of her in a secret basement in their house, away from Elvis and his men on the outside. Jesse makes a foolish attempt to derail Spider’s queries by texting him through Parker’s phone, which actually ends up making Spider head towards Creation later on.
Did Parker avenge her father’s death?
After recuperating, Parker decides to seek justice for Harry’s death by taking down the entire operation of the illegal weapon trade orchestrated by the Swann family. On the other hand, Ghost comes knocking at the Swann household after his shipment gets delayed and holds Ezekiel captive in his home while his sons venture into the mines to access the shipment from the military depot. Gathering weapons from Mo and Frank, Parker begins her vengeful mission all on her own, and as she reaches the Swann mansion, she finds Ezekiel held captive. Parker forces the truth about Harry’s death from the senator and is devastated to know that Harry had been killed by none other than Jesse himself. It remains unknown whether Parker killed Ezekiel—or whether Ghost’s men finished him at the end—but later on, it was confirmed that he had been found dead in his mansion.
Parker goes to the mines to take on Ghost, his terrorist group, and the Swann brothers on her own, when the untimely appearance of Spider nearly sabotages her mission. As Spider nearly gets himself caught, Parker manages to save him by blowing up one of the shipment trucks. As Parker makes her way through the mines, she confronts Ghost and later comes face-to-face with Elvis, both of whom are no match for her combat skills, as they end up getting stabbed to death. However, Spider gets trapped inside the rubble and later gets rescued by Parker’s close associates, while Parker moves forward to apprehend Jesse.
Jesse and Parker end up reaching the military depot through the secret access, and Parker trickily manages to distract the soldiers elsewhere to eventually flush out Jesse. Parker confronts him about her father’s death and conveys that he cannot escape his fate, no matter how desperately he tries. Being former lovers, Parker is immensely aggrieved by Jesse’s betrayal, but she still can’t bring herself to take down Jesse in the end. She urges him to surrender, while Jesse sees no escape from repercussions after all the horrendous things he has done. Jesse’s final statement makes it clear that he was a reluctant accomplice to his family’s illegal trade and would have chosen a better life if he had the chance to do so. Jesse takes out a grenade and kills himself, much to the disappointment of Parker. Eventually, the army finds out about the secret access, and in the aftermath, the trafficking situation gets taken care of as the Swann family is disgraced in public after their machinations become public news.
In Trigger Warning‘s ending, Spider and Parker have recovered from their injuries; Maria’s has become operational once again, and instead of selling it, Parker entrusts responsibility of the bar to Mike. Spider has recovered the footage of Harry’s final moments, but Parker is unwilling to remember her father like that and refuses to watch it. Instead, Spider asks her to play another video, one that shows some of the fond memories of Parker’s younger days spent with her father—a much better way for Parker to honor Harry’s memories. The movie ends as Parker and Spider drive away from Creation, returning back to the Special Forces to take on new missions, as their pick-up truck fades away in the beautiful backdrop of the Cordillera.
