Jessica Alba Breaks Down ‘Trigger Warning’s’ Kick-Ass Hardware Store Fight

Jessica Alba kicks a lot of butt in Trigger Warning, the new action movie that began streaming on Netflix today. But there’s one butt-kicking scene that stands out among the rest, and that’s the Trigger Warning hardware store fight scene.

Directed by Mouly Surya, and written by John Brancato, Josh Olson, and Halley Gross, Trigger Warning stars Alba as a military officer named Parker investigating the death of her grandfather in her hometown. Supposedly, Grandpa’s death was a mining accident. (He loved that damn cave!) But Parker smells something fishy afoot.

On the way out of her grandfather’s old bar, she notices a stolen truck in the parking lot, with machine guns in the back seat. She tails the truck, and witnesses three bad guys with guns attempt to rob a hardware store. Parker decides to intervene. And though it’s one-vs-three—and though Alba is much smaller than her opponents—she manages to best them by getting creatives with the store’s stock.

“We went back and shot that scene special, because it was in a real hardware store,” Alba told Decider in a recent interview. “Everything was practical, and it’s always more challenging when you’re doing this type of action, where it’s very grounded—a lot of hand-to-hand combat—and it’s in a practical location.”

 That practical location was a real hardware store in New Mexico, and in the scene, Parker uses everything from a leather vest, to a broom, to a pair of bolt cutters to best her opponents.

Alba described the scene to Decider, saying, “It smelled like hay and corn feed in there and there was like Carhartt up on the walls, mixed with the chaps, and all the different supplies that you would need on a farm. It was legit! It was fun to shoot in.”

And of course, Parker also utilizes her signature weapon: a small, engraved knife.

As fight coordinator Eric Brown said in an interview for the Trigger Warning press notes, “I thought in a practical sense, what would allow Parker to deal with men that are much bigger than her and multiples of them? We came up with a style that focused on blade work. The knife would be the great equalizer when she got interactive with anybody.” Well, the knife, and those bolt cutters.

Though Alba’s stunt double Bethany Curry handled the more difficult moves, Alba told Decider that she trained and conditioned for two months before production, on top of her already solid martial arts foundation, “just to get myself up to the level where I can jump in and do any kind of choreography.” We stan a flexible queen who takes down bad guys with hardware store props.