“Triggers”: Jessica Alba shakes Netflix ranking with light action film without surprises | REVIEW | REVIEW | TRIGGER WARNING | STREAMING | GABRIEL BASSO | VIDEO | SKIP-ENTER

Parker Calvo (Jessica Alba), a special forces commando, knowledgeable in the use of firearms, but an expert in handling a blade, learns – minutes after saving herself in a confrontation with terrorists in Syria – of the death of the death of his father (Harry/Alejandro de Hoyos). Since she was the only person who had this, she does not hesitate much and travels to her town, Creation, located in Swann County. This is the idea that she generates “Triggers” (“Trigger Warning”, in English), the new sensation of the Netflix viewing algorithm.

“Triggers” is a 106-minute long action film. Directed by the Indonesian Mouly Surya, the proposal has a central approach (the search for truth/justice) and a couple of aspects whose main characteristics are neither surprise nor depth.

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One of the first aspects that become clear when closely following this new Netflix product is that Parker comes from and moves in a predominantly male environment. It is there where, first shooting down terrorists, and then facing his own commando colleagues (eager to take revenge on already surrendered enemies) he uses the aforementioned knife. That knife will accompany her throughout almost the entire film, being part of what we presume should be its great plus: the choreography of confrontations.

Already in Creation, we will discover how Harry – a Mexican immigrant who managed to cultivate a special bond with his daughter Parker – treasured like no one else a kind of cave or tunnel inside a mine. There he had established his own bunker (with a television and a piece of furniture?) to spend his time alone. What should have been a scene of tranquility would at some point become a real problem. All in total ignorance of the character played by Alba.

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The mention of an environment full of men can crumble little by little and easily. To Harry, Parker’s deceased father, we can add Spider (Tone Bell), the protagonist’s commando partner, with whom he begins and ends everything, in the midst of an at times inexplicable intermittency. We then move on to the three members of the Swann family, who are initially profiled with varying degrees of tonalitybut in the end they end up being almost the same.

The family is headed by Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall), a politician who has filled the town with posters for the upcoming election. He is accompanied by his two sons, one supposedly good (the local sheriff, Jesse/Mark Webber) and another, the ‘stray sheep’ (Elvis/Jake Weary), whose ‘unholy’ dealings will guide Parker’s thirst for revenge. later. As he has grown up in his own hometown, Parker believes he knows all three. He sits down to drink wine with the first two, and even accepts misplaced and illogical jokes from the first (“how do you say, latine?”, “My ancestors were Native Americans, that’s why I’m lactose intolerant”).

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This allusion to the incorrect use of inclusive language seems to serve no purpose other than to outline a conservative character who, after a few light appearances, is revealed as the sinister ‘mind’ that controls his two sons (not a new idea in cinema either). Little can be said about Elvis. He has dedicated himself to stealing weapons from his country’s army to negotiate them with local terrorists. In his first ‘meeting’ with Parker he tries to intimidate her (“my brother and you would have had some good mixed-race children”), and throughout the plot he does nothing but repeat the same insult (“bitch”), stripping away scripts whose main characteristic is not necessarily robustness. Finally, Sheriff Jesse has an obvious transformation, although executed in such a fast way that it is clearly implausible.

He is the one who calls Parker to inform him of Harry’s death. It is he who contains it. He is the one who ends up sleeping with her (they were boyfriends in the past). They both drink beer and talk under the dim nightlight of Creation. But this, as we already said, is distorted when our protagonist begins to suspect what is behind the physical disappearance of her parent.

“Triggers” also proposes a series of elements and characters that never transcend to a second level. There is, for example, the allusion to Parker’s family past and origins. In the first half of the film this is used to show us the special bond between father and daughter. Flashbacks that fulfill their function, but that already in the second stage disappear almost completely, without logical explanation. Thus we will see her – as a child – participating in ceremonies, under the influence of regional music, and speaking Spanish with certain difficulties.

In this attempt to show inconsequential things, Surya’s film uses one of the streaming sensations of late, Gabriel Basso, the protagonist of the best-selling “The Night Agent” (2023). He plays Mike, a friend of Parker’s whose first appearance is as inexplicable as almost all the others. In front of the cameras, this young boy serves as a kind of “evocation partner” for the protagonist. Both remember what Harry was like, but perhaps none of those dialogues transcend at the end of the film. Nor all the times he tells her “she is not a spy”.

With Mike inconsequential and a family that is distorted with worrying ease, we will witness, then, an accumulation of empty moments, inexplicably slow movements of Parker entering places to ‘discover the truth’, fights (because yes, there are choreographies of fighting) often punished by visual effects, and the use of privileged data by the protagonist and her remote friend Spider, always ready to appear – with his clean white sneakers – and confront powerful armed terrorists.

“Triggers” can be summed up in a strange strange mix between symbolic allusions to the regional past, attempts at verbal ‘gags’ that never catch, soldiers being assaulted in their own barracks and, again, Parker with his knife in his hand facing a gang of beefy guys. The infinite repetition of these three elements often overshadows any attempt by Jessica Alba to give some drama to her proposal (reviewing photographs from the past and evoking her graduation served for moments). And if a film is not only what but, fundamentally, the way in which it is told, we have just seen only one more product from the Netflix grid.