Trigger Warning may sound like the title of 10 different comedians’ worst stand-up special, but it’s actually the modest combustion that results when three distinct but related types of action thrillers collide in one Netflix movie. It’s partly an airport-novel-style, Jack Reacher-y story about a military-trained badass taking on a nefarious conspiracy and a small army of unredeemable goons. (That’s the one where the title makes the second-most sense, after the bad stand-up.
) It’s partly one of those later-career action movies where a recognizable star rebrands as a surprisingly spry kicker of terrorist ass. And most promisingly, it’s partly a townie noir about a woman returning to her sleepy hometown to investigate the suspicious death of her father. Jessica Alba plays all three roles; she’s reasonably convincing, but probably could have played any one of them even better if the movie wasn’t waffling between the other two.
Alba plays Parker, a Special Forces officer first seen posing as an aid worker to draw out some terrorists. To illustrate that she has a moral code, we see her stopping a colleague from killing unarmed men in cold blood; then, in a characteristically middle-of-the-road dodge, Trigger Warning has her objecting to this practice primarily because the men are “assets” who hadn’t yet been interrogated for information. (This is so you know she doesn’t want to coddle the bad guys by granting them human rights.
) Parker heads to her rural ho.
