TRIGGER WARNING. Cinema in a male way, yet FEMALE, or vice versa

On Netflix, you can now watch “Trigger Warning,” a new title directed by Mouly Surya and starring Jessica Alba, who also co-produced the film. And I’ll say right away that I was disappointed from the very first scene, and it only got worse from there. My disappointment was caused by almost everything – the fight scenes, the pace of the action, the script, the editing, the music, and worst of all, the main character Parker, who throughout the film failed to create a sufficiently convincing action movie persona. To effectively challenge male-centric cinema in the style of “Commando” or “Rambo,” you need more than just swapping an actor for an actress. That’s why I provocatively wrote that “Trigger Warning” is female cinema done in a male way, or vice versa, because it doesn’t matter what gender the actor is when participating in a weak project. The problem is that if you want to build the value of the film on this premise, Mouly Surya’s production uses gender to forcefully prove something, and you feel this pretentiousness throughout the screening.

Returning to the first scene, when we meet Parker as an unwavering warrior, the soldiers shoot at each other a lot but strangely cannot hit anything, while a sniper from several hundred meters away blows a terrorist’s head off. Strange, right? And then, right after the action, Parker learns about her father’s death, drops everything, and goes to a small American town ruled by a certain senator, Swann, who is running for re-election along with his shady sons. Parker’s father, a Vietnam veteran, of course, did not die in an accident, and the matter is connected with illegal arms trafficking. Everything is there – an opening scene with military action, a bar fight scene, a mine, a corrupt politician, a heroine who prepares alone for the final showdown with the bad guys, reminiscences of her father’s teachings, and even a romantic shot of Parker wielding a machete against the backdrop of a rising sun. All of this combined borders on satire of action cinema. The only thing missing is Graham Chapman as Biggus Dickus whispering dirty jokes into the heroine’s ear with that droning voice of his. That would be better than the tacky scenes with her father in the car. The synthetic music doesn’t help, written without any inspiration, as if someone was just learning the art of composing.

The antagonists fare no better – senior Swann is a hollow villain – he can’t even plan a clever scheme, just getting deeper and deeper, not only into conflict with Parker but also into a dangerous transaction with a certain grenade launcher buyer wanted by the FBI. In his stupidity, he is particularly supported by Elvis and his henchmen. Nothing here makes sense, even if the creators wanted to show the process of serially killing bot-like opponents in the style of “John Wick,” they wrapped it so poorly that “Trigger Warning” can be considered a hastily made TV movie with a low budget that will pass unnoticed, or maybe even unfortunately serve as an example to critics of women’s participation in action cinema that they shouldn’t be there. Jessica Alba with “Trigger Warning” should definitely not enter even the canon of unwatchable Z-grade cinema. For quite a few years now, Z and B grades can sometimes turn out to be an advantage and a key to cult status. I hope “Trigger Warning” is not just bad (which it obviously is) but so derivative and bland that everyone will forget about it. Making it an anti-example of good cinema also unfortunately gives the opportunity for some crazy group of viewers to appreciate it, but there is nothing to appreciate. Maybe the colors of the austere ecosystem of the American prairie, which the digital camera in Dolby Vision shows effectively? Definitely not for Alba’s acting, nor the hopping from one antagonist to another – one moment it’s old Swann, another moment it’s the mysterious grenade launcher buyer whose thread quickly ends, and in the finale, it suddenly turns out to be the overly dramatic, morally torn Jesse, Swann’s son, who was the sheriff in the town and throughout the film couldn’t decide whether to be bad or to redeem himself. By the end, it seems he finally manages to come to moral terms with himself, but that’s not the most important finale.

As befits an American film to the core, the most important thing is the journey and a new life – there’s also love in the background, but not directly. “Trigger Warning” does not shy away from violence, but interestingly, it avoids sexuality, like a small-town boarding house. And that’s an interesting approach – hypocritical, one might say, almost as much as Alba’s acting. And now, if any of you had the chance, compare Parker’s character to another woman already thoroughly criticized in action cinema – Atlas, played by Jennifer Lopez. I’ll write this with full responsibility – there’s no comparison, obviously in favor of Lopez. So you can imagine how much Parker aka Alba failed to play a convincing action heroine. I expected this from the very first scene, maybe even from the teaser. In the end, I have no choice but to give it a rating – 2/10 would be fair. It could have been just one star, but for the scenery and color gamut, “Trigger Warning” deserves one more. And by the way, it worries me that it adheres to male action cinema standards in such a derivative way.