Anthony Michael Hall says Jessica Alba was like an "extra stunt coordinator" on Trigger Warning
Hall plays villain Ezekiel Swann in the new Netflix movie.
Since debuting on Netflix last Friday, new thriller Trigger Warning has found a huge audience – becoming the most watched film on the streamer this week despite receiving mostly negative reviews from critics.
The film stars Jessica Alba in her first movie role for five years, with the former Fallen Angel star playing a skilled Special Forces commando who returns to her home town following the suspicious death of her father.
She soon finds herself doing battle with a family of crooks running rampant in the town, headed up by Anthony Michael Hall's shady politician Ezekiel Swann. This eventually leads to some violent action sequences – and according to Hall, Alba was very impressive behind the camera when it came to putting these scenes together.
"Jessica Alba, let me tell you about her because she's something else," he told RadioTimes.com during an exclusive interview. "She's really a force of nature. She's very focused, you know, she has a big history with the Robert Rodriguez films, and Dark Angel, and doing action.
"So she was like another stunt coordinator on the film, she really knows her stuff. And it was very important to her that we all be up to speed, you know. Not just the execution of her own action. But all of us, you know, she was really attending to all that as a producer."
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He continued: "And then on screen, she's got a great presence. It was really great to see her kind of lead the charge in that role."
Hall picked out a couple of sequences with the star that he particularly enjoyed being a part of – including a fight scene in the town jail in which Alba "basically kicks ass", and his final scene with her character which he said reminded him of the ending of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.
"At that point, Ezekiel is just laid bare, like we know what he's about," he explained. "He's a corrupt senator, and his two sons are very Cain and Abel-esque, you know, they're all complicit. So it was really interesting to kind of play that final scene with Jessica and just see where her vibe was.
"She's coming in very heroic with the sword. And she takes care of business. We'll leave it at that. For me, you know, it reminded me, somewhere in the back of my mind, I just kept thinking of There Will be Blood because it was that scene with Daniel Day [Lewis], you know, at the end of the film. So we see a different type of Swann. You know, he's tied up and he's got adversity there. And he's just kind of coming undone."
Hall – who first found fame as a teenager with roles in iconic John Hughes films The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles – said that in addition to Alba, there were a number of things about the film that jumped out to him when he was first offered the role, including the chance to work with production company Thunder Road.
"I love the John Wick franchise," he said. "I love action films, and going back to the '70s when I was a little kid I loved... Bruce Lee was like my hero, you know. And I loved all the '70s genre stuff know, there were so many cool action heroes that kind of predate the '80s heroes. So it was really fun to be in this kind of action franchise that Jessica was leading the charge on.
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"But Thunder Road is really top notch. They have a group that they work with called 87eleven. I've worked with a lot of great stunt teams, but this group was something special. I mean, they had a whole core of guys there probably five or six weeks before the actors got there, before we even started shooting. And they pre visualised all the sequences, they shot them and they have coordinators and assistant coordinators and just incredible to work with.
He continued: "And then it was also just a really core group of three women that led the charge. It was Mouly Surya, the director, the cinematographer was a woman named Zoe White, who had shot The Handmaid's Tale, she is a really talented filmmaker. And then we had two producers, Esther Hornstein and Erica Lee from Thunder Road.
"So we just had these great women in charge on this project, which was really cool. I've worked with female directors, and obviously a lot of great women in my career. But it was so cool to see all of them in charge on this."
Trigger Warning is now streaming on Netflix – sign up from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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