Triggered (2024)

Horrible.

When i first saw the trailer i actually got excited, because i thought to myself wow, we finally have a filipino action film that will be in the same vein as Timo Tjahjanto. (Night Comes For Us, Shadow Strays)

Pero potangina sobrang disappointing lang. The horrible dialogue and lazy cliched scriptwriting is obvious, but i wouldve honestly forgiven all of it if the advertised hardcore and gory action was executed decently.

Pero gago wala din. Most of the Gore is for some reason offscreened, and the shootouts that have no sense of geography are all horribly edited. There is a scene here wherein the lead shouts "Northwest" but the film doesnt show or indicate that villains are actually coming from there. At one point he also asks cover fire but never show the reason as to why. Is he gonna go to a better spot? or is he gonna flank??.

There's also multiple awful editing decisions. Crossing the line so many times further highliting its lack of clarity, direction and geography. The shaky cam could have been fine, but it being combined with all the awful aforementioned decisions, makes it hard to justify its usage.

The plot also lacks a sense of escalation. Magugulat ka biglaan nalang matatalo or mahuhuli yung bida kasi the film decided that we have to finally move on to the third act.

The only positive that i can say here is that Sid Lucero is definitely giving his all as this cartoony ass cardboard villain. The hand to hand fight scenes are also suprisingly good, with Sid Lucero's performance in the final fight being a highlight. The fight scenes wherein the villains are clearly stuntmen are also decent.

But the rest of the film? just horrible. I really thought that after BuyBust we we're finally in a good direction towards creating our own action language. But honestly this just takes us 2 steps back. It's really a shame as well because you can clearly see that the stunt team put proper effort to create good action.

We really need proper action directors man because this is just sad to see. Hindi na excuse ang maliliit nating budget pati lack of good stunt teams, ang ayos ayos na ng gawa ng stunt teams natin, kulang nalang talaga sa direksyon.