Forgettable even by the impossibly low requirements of a mid-budget Netflix motion film, Mouly Surya’s “Set off Warning” may be a shade extra colourful than colossal bores like “Purple Discover” and “The Grey Man,” however this still-bland Jessica Alba car is all of the extra irritating as a result of it doesn’t really feel like some defanged summer time blockbuster that was denied its true function by skipping previous theaters. Quite the opposite, an R-rated, character-driven “First Blood” throwback a couple of Particular Forces commando who returns from Syria to search out her fading hometown within the grip of a high-powered arms supplier is exactly the sort of motion film that Netflix ought to be making.
To wit: It scratches an itch that extra conventional studios gained’t contact, permits a popular actress to get again within the sport with out having to hold a franchise on her shoulders, and does so at a scale that strikes a contented compromise between movie and TV — at the least in idea. However therein lies the rub. Beholden to neither Nielsen rankings nor field workplace numbers, “Set off Warning” solely exists to serve the wants of a streaming algorithm, which is simply as properly, as that streaming algorithm is the one viewers this undercooked and totally lifeless piece of streaming content material might ever hope to fulfill.
Even the needlessly provocative title of this film — which guarantees a level of political confrontation that’s all however absent from the film itself — feels just like the byproduct of a tradition that’s delegated its final traces of vital considering and/or curatorial company to the “For You” tabs of the world.
Which isn’t to say that “Set off Warning” doesn’t gesture in the direction of any delicate subjects. Alba’s Mexican-American supersoldier could not declare a transparent affiliation for one social gathering or one other, however Parker doesn’t appear overly impressed by the super-vanilla Republican senator who lords over Creation, NM like a cartel boss, or by the anti-progressive marketing campaign advertisements he pumps by means of the native radio station in the course of the lead-up to his subsequent election (Ezekiel Swann is performed by a menacing however wildly under-used Anthony Michael Corridor, doing what little he can to redeem ChatGPT-worthy scenes just like the one the place he grills Parker on the proper pronunciation of “Latinx”).
Perhaps that’s as a result of Parker doesn’t respect Swann’s approach of creating white People really feel dangerously unsafe in their very own nation, a paranoia that’s leveraged to gasoline the rampant militarization of small-town police forces that hardly have the necessity for weapons, not to mention RPGs. Perhaps it’s as a result of she’s starting to suspect that Swann had one thing to do with the current mine shaft collapse that killed her father, a tragedy that pressured her to return again house and settle the lifeless man’s affairs. Or possibly Parker’s lack of enthusiasm can merely be ascribed to the truth that Alba’s efficiency is so flat and stilted it makes Steven Seagal in “Onerous to Kill” appear like Eddie Redmayne in “Cabaret.”
Seemingly bored out of her thoughts in each scene the place she isn’t slitting a foul man’s throat, the likable “Darkish Angel” actress — a succesful motion star who’s by no means lacked charisma previously — seems to have confused Rambo-like stoicism with full dissociation. One particularly telling second finds Alba delivering some dialogue with a gun to her head; it sounds precisely like all of her different strains.
Parker is clearly a cool buyer, however it’s arduous to just accept her colder than loss of life perspective as a style affectation in a film that takes itself this significantly. By the identical token, it’s arduous to take pleasure in Parker’s even-keeled emotionality in a film that confronts the character with such a wide selection of alternatives to specific herself. If Parker has been numbed by her expertise conducting (or committing) navy “shenanigans” within the Center East, it doesn’t cease her from getting all sentimental over her dad’s previous bar. If her attachment to Creation and its individuals runs deep sufficient that she solutions a telephone name from her former promenade date a couple of seconds after watching “Arabic Terrorist #1” get executed at point-blank vary within the movie’s opening sequence, that doesn’t cease her from treating him like a stranger when she will get house.
The entire lack of frisson between Parker and Jesse (Mark Webber) is made all of the extra inexplicable by the truth that Jesse additionally occurs to be one of many senator’s two giant grownup sons (Jake Weary performs the extra racist Elvis), in addition to the police officer who’s investigating the loss of life of Parker’s father. And whereas the script makes a half-hearted effort to discover the ethical dilemma of a neighborhood cop torn between decency and corruption, there’s no approach for that subplot to take root when it makes so little of an impression on the story’s protagonist.
The inadvertently hilarious scene wherein that subplot resolves hinges on the clumsiest beat in an in any other case competently directed movie, however it’s mishandled to a level that calls additional consideration to the AI-like ethos behind this complete enterprise; the film’s numbing artistic entropy can’t assist however sting anew on the sight of a gifted director like Surya, whose “satay Western” “Marlina the Assassin in 4 Acts” was Cannes standout in 2017, fumbling her approach by means of an explosive character beat that feels prefer it was copy-pasted from an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
It’s an sudden anomaly in a movie the place each shot seems like a primary take, each scene feels just like the least attention-grabbing model of what the story calls for, and there’s altogether so little sense of place or persona that the ultimate boss doesn’t also have a title. It’s the kind of gaffe that forces you to consider how we acquired right here, an unlucky self-own on the finish of a Netflix film that desperately hopes the following piece of content material will begin auto-playing earlier than anybody can learn the credit. When a streaming film from a singular director seems this generic, and when a script credited to a handful of good writers — together with “A Historical past of Violence” scribe Josh Olson and “The Final of Us Half II” co-author Halley Gross — is this absent any hint of their unmistakable intelligence, the blame for its shortcomings should belong much less to any of the artists concerned than it does to the character of the manufacturing that introduced them collectively.
Sooner or later alongside the way in which, the powers that be seem to have determined that “Set off Warning” didn’t should be good, it simply needed to be one thing that folks would possibly succumb to on a Friday evening once they don’t have the vitality to hunt out one thing higher; possibly sitting by means of nearly two hours of tedium for the 5 seconds the place Jessica Alba fends off a chainsaw-wielding unhealthy man in a ironmongery shop isn’t such a foul deal when it’s baked into the price of a month-to-month subscription price (it’s the most effective motion beat in a film the place all of them are serviceable however none of them depart a mark). It’s an excellent factor we’re all going to stay endlessly.
If in idea that is the sort of motion film that Netflix needs to be making, in follow it’s the sort of motion film that shouldn’t have been made in any respect — not as a result of the style classics it’s riffing on have been excessive artwork, however moderately as a result of stock-driven enshittification is a destiny worse than loss of life for proud schlock. To paraphrase one thing that Parker’s dad tells her in a throwaway flashback that feels inserted into the movie at random: There’s no sense carrying a knife in case you don’t trouble to sharpen it first.
Grade: D+
“Set off Warning” is now streaming on Netflix.