A military veteran from the U.S. elite forces is forced to take over her father's bar after his death. Soon she'll have to leave the bar and deal with a violent gang that runs rampant in the town. That's the premise of Detonantes (Trigger Point), the new movie premiering this weekend on Netflix, which has managed to capture the attention of subscribers to the platform by entering directly at number one on the global Top10. 

Jessica Alba plays Parker, the protagonist of this story, a military veteran from the U.S. elite forces stationed abroad, who is forced to return to her hometown upon learning that her father has unexpectedly passed away.

Forced to take charge of the family bar, she reunites with her ex-boyfriend, now Sheriff Jesse (Mark Webber), and with his family: the temperamental brother Elvis (Jake Weary) and their father, the powerful Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall). Meanwhile, Parker will try to understand what really happened to her father.

Lacking answers, Parker will have to face a violent gang that runs rampant in the town. Since she doesn't trust anyone, she relies on her military training and proves to be a formidable adversary in her quest for the truth and her efforts to bring order to Swann County, a mission she will carry out with the help of Spider (Tone Bell), a hacker and secretive operations partner, and the dealer Mike (Gabriel Basso). 

Heroines and Icons

With this character, Alba fulfills an old dream: to be an action heroine, like some of her childhood heroes. "I loved La Femme Nikita by Luc Besson," she says. "I also loved Ripley in Alien, and I love Sarah Connor in Terminator". 

For Mouly Surya, the film's director, Alba was a icon during her childhood. The Indonesian filmmaker contacted the actress by phone at an unusual place: after a yoga class in Jakarta, Surya's hometown. "It was a little surreal," Surya says. "We talked for about an hour, and it was totally unexpected to be talking to your teenage idol basically out of nowhere."

"At first, I didn't know how to behave with her," she says. "But little by little, you start seeing actors as people." Surya has a lot of experience working with stars in Indonesia, where she has directed several films, including Fiksi, a Citra Award winner, and Marlina, the Murderer in Four Acts. "Jessica is very fiery and direct," Surya says. "She will tell you exactly what she thinks, and I love that about her."

Action Scenes

"It had been a long time since I had practiced hand-to-hand combat and intense action," Alba explains to Tudum, Alba, who in addition to being the star, is an executive producer.

Alba was determined from reading the script to make Parker more than just a weapons expert, so she worked in collaboration with Mouly Surya and the film's specialist team, incorporating Indonesian knife fighting into the fight choreography, creating sequences that required mental quickness and movement.

"For me, "I really wanted it to be a more intimate fight experience if needed to take someone out".

Connection to Personal Losses

For Surya, the story had an unexpected strength. "I think one of the things that attracted me to this film is loss," says the director. "And I really connected with that pain of losing my father a few years before".

Alba also connected with her character's pain. "My grandfather passed away during the development of this film," she says. "I drew a lot of inspiration from that personal experience while making the movie because, literally, it happened, and I was able to use many family photos in the bar scenes." In the end, it's a family story.