Warning: Major spoilers for Alarum below!Alarum is an intense spy thriller fronted by Willa Fitzgerald and Sylvester Stallone, with the ending teasing further adventures. This Stallone action movie focuses on former rival spies Joe (Scott Eastwood) and Laura (Willa Fitzgerald), who fall in love and run away together. During their vacation in Poland, a plane carrying ᴅᴇᴀᴅ DEA agents crashes nearby. Joe recovers an important flash drive from the wreckage, and soon he and Laura are targeted by lethal operative Orlin (Mike Colter) and CIA “arbiter” Chester (Stallone), who want the device.

Joe and Laura spend most of the runtime dodging bullets and explosions, while the CIA learns they might be part of a mystery spy group called “Alarum.” By the end, Orlin is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and the CIA’s plan to wipe out Joe and Laura with drones has failed. In the final scene, survivors Joe, Laura and Chester prepare to be extracted by Alarum, and plan to use what’s on the drive to take the fight directly to the CIA.

What Is On The Flash Drive In Alarum?

The drive is Alarum’s big MacGuffin

It was just bad luck that Laura and Joe happened to be near this plane when it crashed. A snooping Joe deducts the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ pilot must have been carrying something important, and proceeds to cut open his stomach to find a flash drive he had swallowed. Since Orlin’s endless wave of henchmen soon chases him, Joe correctly deducts whatever is on the drive is real important. Joe’s old CIA boss Director Burbridge (D. W. Moffett) soon learns from the DEA that this flash drive could expose details of various national intelligence agency operations to the world.

Thus, the CIA wants this drive badly, preventing anyone else from getting their hands on it. They also don’t trust Joe, who vanished five years before after being kidnapped by Laura. The CIA believes the happy couple are also part of Alarum, and send in Chester to ᴀssᴀssinate them both. In truth, the film uses the flash drive as a vague MacGuffin to justify its various action sequences.

It never truly feels like a life or death situation that this flash drive doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. On paper, it sounds like the drive being sold to the highest bidder would spell disaster, but there are chunks of the film where audiences are liable to forget about it entirely.

How Joe Tricks Chester Into Poisoning Himself & Why He Gives Him The Antidote

Stallone’s Chester could never resist a drink

Stallone’s last movie Armor earned 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was notable for featuring his first villain turn in many years. While Alarum’s Chester isn’t a total villain, he’s definitely not a good guy either. Despite having some affection for Joe after they worked together years before, he still intends to kill him when the CIA puts him on the case. Chester’s preferred method is a slow-acting poison, which kills its victims in an hour. After Chester sticks Joe with the fatal needle, this gives Eastwood’s protagonist exactly 60 minutes to kill Orlin’s mercenaries and save his wife.

Expect, when the one-hour mark is over, it’s Chester who starts to feel ill. It turns out Joe had looked through the ᴀssᴀssin’s gear before they met up, and replaced the poison in the vial with water. Joe then dumped Chester’s poison into his vodka bottle, with Stallone’s character taking sips throughout their meeting. Chester soon begs for the antidote, but Joe appears (understandably) reluctant.

However, Joe feels he and Laura might need his help fighting against the CIA, and hands the antidote over. It actually would have been a more fitting fate for Chester to have died from the poison, especially after he used it to kill the luckless pilot who escorted him to the resort. Since Alarum is setting up a potential sequel, the film chickens out on killing its biggest star name, however. Stallone has also refused to die onscreen since F.I.S.T., a 1978 thriller where his character is gunned down.

What Is Alarum & Who Is Part Of It By The End

The movie is a little vague about Alarum’s purpose and mission

Throughout the story, exactly what Alarum is or who is part of it is kept vague. It’s initially set up as something akin to Mission: Impossible’s The Syndicate; they are both made up of rogue spies from different agencies operating under their own power. The rumor is that Alarum wants to “tear down the tyranny of the global intelligence network,“ and they plan to sell the flash drive to foreign intelligence agencies.

When it’s revealed that Laura herself is part of Alarum, she sums up what the group is about. They are spies who work for themselves, and not for a single country or government agency. While Joe is essentially retired when the movie begins, he decides to finally join Alarum to seek revenge on Burbridge for targeting him and his wife. In exchange for the antidote, Chester also agrees to join the agency and kill as many people as they need him to.

What Happened To The Witness Laura Was Meant To Protect?

Alarum seems to forget about this subplot

Another plotline Alarum doesn’t do a great job of explaining is Laura’s ᴀssignment at the resort. When the mercenaries attack, Laura makes it her business to protect businessman Roland Rousseau (played by the movie’s producer, Joel Cohen). After Laura fends off ᴀssᴀssins that enter his cabin, she tells him to hide in the closet as the others will believe he fled; then she heads to the resort to rescue the other hostages.

The CIA later learn that Rousseau was laundering money for an arms dealer, and Alarum may have been trying to recruit him to their cause. This is never confirmed within the movie, as this character and subplot are swiftly forgotten for the rest of the story. It can be ᴀssumed Rousseau survived and escaped – alongside the rest of the hostages who simply vanish from the resort.

How Alarum Sets Up A Sequel

Joe, Laura and Chester are going to war

It becomes clear from the final scene that the makers of Alarum see it as the start of a potential franchise. Instead of wrapping up loose ends, it sets the pieces in place for Joe and Laura to seek revenge on the CIA for trying to wipe them out. They also possess the flash drive, which they can hand over to Alarum; exactly what the spy group will do with the information on it is another question. Since Chester also vowed to join if Joe spared his life, it can be ᴀssumed Stallone’s anti-hero would return too.

Sadly, the plot of Alarum is so convoluted it’s tough to get excited for a second entry. The only interesting thing a follow-up could do is actually explore what Alarum is, and introduce more agents from across the globe. Seeking revenge on Burbridge doesn’t feel like very high stakes for a direct sequel either, so if one happens, a genuine threat will need to be introduced.