Riposte

First, J Lo. Now, Jessica Alba, too.

I love J Lo and I love Jessica Alba. But, wow, they have signed on to really bad movies for Netflix.

I think Alba's at her best in romantic comedies. Action films, not so much. But I think it's not entirely her fault - the projects she's signed onto in the past few years have had poor writing, production value, and directing.

Alba's not that old, so she can still do romantic comedies. I really wish she would go back to that. Ok, I understand if she wants to expand her range. But then she really needs better projects to sink her teeth and talent into.

As for "Trigger Warning", it's entirely forgettable and I could hardly make it through the entire runtime. I'm all for strong female characters when the writing is good - think "Blue Eye Samurai". Sadly, we didn't get one here.

This movie receives a maximum of two stars from me. Some scenes in the movie have no continuity. This movie has terrible direction. Jessica Alba's acting prowess has been demonstrated in her prior films. However, in this one, there is acting confusion in every scene. Actually, hardly a single scene has any life in it. Discovering the cause of the heroine's father's death is the main goal of the film. It's a completely bad film. From the outset, it presents a quiet atmosphere in a desolate setting with few actors. It's like an inexperienced director took a nonsense script and cast it. Even with a bad screenplay, these kinds of thrillers ought to have better acting. Jessica doesn't even know how to hold a knife correctly in this film. A group of dramatists who were unaware of the circumstances made up the co-actors. Come on, Netflix is the greatest place to see if a movie is good or horrible right now.

It's always ominous when a film is Netflix 'straight to streaming' and lead actress (the still gorgeous) Jessica Alba hasn't made a decent movie in years, so no surprise here then, it's pants.

Things actually start out ok with a well choreographed action sequence, but soon descend into formulaic tv movie territory once Alba returns home to the New Mexico desert after receiving news of the mysterious death of her ex-marine father.

The paper thin plot involves a bunch of dodgy local illegal arms dealers and corrupt local politics with Alba going into full-on female Chuck Norris mode once she finds out what's going on amongst the cliches and sagebrush.

Of course the storyline has been done a million times (better) before, the no-name supporting cast are bland and throwaway while the screenplay meanders along to its generic ending almost two hours later!

In summation, this forgettable rubbish would've been better served as a mini-series on Hulu or Peacock rather than a Netflix feature film! Oh well, time to break out the X-Files and Twin Peaks DVDs again and remember what good viewing USED to look like.

Jessica Alba's career managers should be fired. Netflix should fire the entire team responsible for choosing film scripts. Not even the worst North Korean B-movie screenwriter would write a script like that. And I didn't even mention the technical team And director, etc.. The action scenes are so poorly done that they wouldn't even be used in Rambo. Poor visual and sound effects. The editing does not follow the continuity. Many points were not clarified. Anyway, don't waste your time. Poor Jessica, who didn't see the light of day this time, remains in the darkness of Hollywood's second echelon.

How easy is it to actually sell a script to Netflix?

Take a look at Trigger Warning and you'll know. The script is incredibly bad and full of bad cliches. The director is absolutely out of her depth with everything, but worst of all with the action scenes. Even Jessica Alba can't save this lousy movie, but that seems to be her fault. According to the motto: Take the money and run. Too bad, because Alba is a really great actress. Just not in Trigger Warning. If you want to get upset about a badly made movie, then watch Trigger Warning.

And to the people at Netflix, just fire the entire script department, if you have one at all.