Jessica Alba says playing a knife-wielding Jason Bourne type was always the dream — just no one had asked

Why did Jason Statham, sizzling man mannequin turned gut-buster, get to develop into Jason Statham, however Jessica Alba didn’t? Not solely does Netflix’s new motion film Set off Warning give the 2000s-era icon permission to hack and slash her method by means of machine-gun-toting goons, it reminds viewers that Alba ought to have been doing this all alongside.

James Cameron knew it, giving Alba her huge break at the age of 19 by casting her as a tremendous soldier on the run in Fox’s 2000 TV sequence Darkish Angel. Hollywood instantly took discover — kinda? When Darkish Angel wrapped in 2002, Alba broke into films, playing a dancer with goals in Honey; a stripper born of tragedy in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin Metropolis; Sue Storm, a character imbued with Nineteen Sixties gender-role logic, in Incredible 4; and a diver turned treasure hunter in Into the Blue, a function that appears to experience the indisputable fact that its lead actor might logically put on a bikini for 95% of the run time. Alba felt the ogling. “The scripts I get are always for the whore, or the motorcycle chick in leather, or the horny maid,” she told Page Six in 2005. “I don’t think this is happening to Natalie Portman.”

Over the years, a few filmmakers caught on to Alba’s true bodily potential, which went past attractiveness. Rodriguez let her character Nancy go on the assault in the sequel Sin Metropolis: A Dame to Kill For. In 2015, in what felt like a heel flip for a hero arc she by no means bought, Alba performed a high-kicking villain in the motion comedy Barely Deadly. She even joined Jason Statham in Mechanic: Resurrection, the place she lands a few punches (whereas in a bikini). Nonetheless, no one has appeared to see Alba for what ought to might actually be: a devastator, a slayer, and a worthy peer of the Expendables.

Set off Warning lets her rip as Parker Calvo, a Mexican American Particular Forces soldier who returns to her hometown to research a string of crimes linked to a bigger arms-dealing operation and corrupt native politicians. Parker needs to set issues proper — and get revenge for her father. It’s a setup for grungy motion that Alba, no shock, conducts with excessive brutality. Polygon talked to Alba and Set off Warning director Mouly Surya, an Indonesian filmmaker making her English-language debut, about breaking out once more. With knives.

Polygon: Jessica, it was a thrill to see you in Set off Warning. Nevertheless it made me surprise, round Darkish Angel or Sin Metropolis or Incredible 4, have been individuals speaking to you about making a down-and-dirty motion film? Clearly there have been male stars who have been getting these presents.

Jessica Alba: I always wished to be Jason Bourne. And I always wished to be Bond. And I always wished to be the character in the Tom Clancy novel. However they have been always written as dudes! And so this was kind of like want achievement that I bought to be in a gritty motion film, however actually embracing the female and this fierce girl.

I feel this style is so dominated by males, that if you do see girls, you usually see them by means of the lens of what a “badass woman” seems to be like, in the event you’re a dude. Usually she is fairly stoic, not a ton of feelings. Often, she has a bob of some kind. She’s going to put on stilettos. She’ll most likely put on some kind of form-figure tight gown that isn’t nice for motion or sensible. Or she’s a damsel in misery, and she or he must be saved by the man. So after I joined this film, it was actually essential that there was just a extra female tackle this style.

Mouly and I, with the feminine producers, have been like, “What do we want Parker to really be?” So we introduced in a feminine author, and actually constructed out this world and the characters so as to get many layers and ranges to everybody, so the unhealthy guys aren’t just anonymous and faceless. [Parker’s] not just a random individual from someplace. Every thing feels very nuanced, and feels grounded in a actuality that was essential to us.

Mouly, you come from the Indonesian movie scene the place motion is a main area, however my impression is that it’s just like Hollywood, in that it’s nonetheless dominated by males. So what are your touchstones for creating a film that kicks ass however suits the specificity Jessica was in search of?

Mouly Surya: Rising up there weren’t a lot of Indonesian motion films. There have been a few, and now greater than ever. You’ve most likely seen The Raid, which was superior, however I was raised with a lot of Chinese language martial arts films. That’s what I’m very accustomed to, truly. And I feel that’s what I was making an attempt to inject into the movie. There’s a sure dramatization, there’s a sure type of, like, consciousness of area that I’m making an attempt to get into this film.

Photograph: Ursula Coyote/Netflix

Jessica, in Set off Warning, you struggle a man wielding a chainsaw. When you’re producing your individual motion film, are you making requests like “I want to fight a man wielding a chainsaw”? What was in your private motion want record?

Alba: My two issues I actually wished to do is I wished hand-to-hand fight and I wished to leverage extra of a soiled, gritty krav maga model. I wished it to really feel actually grounded and messy and never so buttoned-up. I didn’t need a ton of weapons, when it comes to what Parker makes use of all through the movie. Actually, if she must defend herself, it will just be extra attention-grabbing to see hand-to-hand fight, I felt like, and [Surya] agreed. We felt like a extra real looking option to take out an opponent, particularly a man who might be twice my dimension, is to have knives. So I bought to coach with many various kinds of knives. That was new and enjoyable. And to have the ability to use knives in the technique of hand-to-hand fight was actually totally different — it nearly felt like a throwback.

There are a lot of films as of late, particularly motion, the place there’s a ton of particular results, a lot of computer-generated stuff, however this was fairly sensible. We have been in an precise ironmongery shop. I actually pulled chaps off of a hook. I actually did must whip it. I had to learn to whip it correctly! And I did all of that in actual life. It took a bunch of coordination, however I feel it seems to be nice and it feels very authentic.

Not solely do I feel you each introduced the female ahead in an genuine method in Set off Warning, however there’s room to grapple with different xenophobic motion tropes. I considered Rambo: Final Blood from a few years again, which pit Stallone towards Mexican cartels in what amounted to just trite, jingoistic garbo. In the meantime, Parker is a Mexican American warfare vet who snuffs home terrorism in her hometown. Did you got down to make a type of retaliation towards films like that?

Alba: I don’t know if it’s a retaliation to that particular film, however for us, it was particular retaliation to all of the stigmas and stereotypes that had been put upon girls and definitely the Mexican American group and Latinos and the way they’ve traditionally been depicted. It was just good to make a hero out of the person who this city would least suspect. They undervalued her and undermined her powers, these corrupt individuals on this city. To have a hero like her, we thought it will really feel just actually inspiring.

Surya: From the get-go, once we bought Jessica hooked up to the script… I always beloved her as an actress — I’m sorry for saying it in third individual!

Alba: Wow, thanks! By no means heard this, that is excellent news. [laughs]

Surya: She has such a high quality to her; the emotional half is what Jessica actually brings into the function. Parker has always been robust, on paper, bodily and mentally. However Jessica brings us a lot of emotion to it — a rage, I might say. Which makes the character attention-grabbing and layered and actual! That’s what I wished, that specificity. She embodies the character. She’s fiery. That type of factor I don’t actually see in different motion films. This has a little little bit of retro feeling to it, prefer it’s not made in the ’80s, nevertheless it appears like one thing that might have been made in the ’80s. However you don’t see an ’80s motion film with a most important character who’s a girl.

Set off Warning is now streaming on Netflix.