Movie Review - Miss Bala (2019)

Gerardo Naranjo directed and co-wrote Miss Bala (2012), which was a crime drama inspired by an actual crime that occurred in Mexico. In 2008, a Mexican model and beauty pageant winner was arrested for gun trafficking and being linked to a Mexican drug cartel. Naranjo's film depicted how such a beauty pageant winner could be forced to participate in such crimes.

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight and Thirteen) directs this remake or American adaptation. This version allows some changes to Naranjo's story that make sense given that an American is now starring in this film. Those changes help Americans better identify with what's happening, but other changes are baffling and only disconnect the characters from their situations. The goal would seem to make audiences empathize or sympathize with certain characters, but it also removes whatever sense of realism this film could have had.

Like the recent film Traffik (2018), starring Paula Patton, this film forgoes realism for a push toward the kind of kick-ass feminism that we've seen lately. This is fine, but this movie doesn't push hard enough into that kind of feminism as much as one would have wanted. It's not as if Patton was totally kick-ass in that film last year, but Patton is known for her few action roles. Given how the character starts or who she is, it makes sense that Patton's character wouldn't go full Wonder Woman. The same could be said about the protagonist here, but the film feels like it wants to go full Wonder Woman but it can't even be half-Wonder Woman. If you want to see a film go full Wonder Woman without it being the comic book film from 2017, then check out Revenge (2018).

Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) stars as Gloria Fuentes, a makeup artist from Los Angeles who works behind-the-scenes at fashion week. She drives to Tijuana, which is just across the border in the Mexican state of Baja California. She drives there to visit her friend, Suzu Ramós, played by Cristina Rodlo. Suzu is participating in a beauty pageant, Miss Baja California.

Gloria and Suzu are kidnapped. Gloria is forced to be a mule for a drug cartel in order to find Suzu. As such, she's forced to drive a car with contraband hidden inside. She travels up and down Interstate Highway 5. Seeing her be put in this situation and seeing her try to get out of it constitutes most of the thrills and tension here. Rodriguez's character doesn't become as fierce as her character in Annihilation (2018), but she perhaps wants to be.

Ismael Cruz Córdova (Ray Donovan and The Good Wife) co-stars as Lino Esparza, the leader of Las Estrellas, the cartel or gang in question here. Lino claims to be from Bakersfield, which is two hours north of Los Angeles. He talks about coming to Mexico due to various reasons, problems in his home life. He feels like he's a man without a country or a man in between. He talks about being too gringo to be Mexican and too Mexican to be gringo.

This is supposed to echo what Gloria feels. Gloria was also born in the U.S., but she's spent a lot of time in Mexico. She knows Spanish, but she's not as fluent as she perhaps wants to be. As such, she's called a "gringo" or a foreigner. However, the reason she's driven to see Suzu is because she perhaps feels like a foreigner in the United States as well.

This is a sentiment probably expressed by many people who are immigrants or who are Second or Third-Generation. However, this sentiment is also meant to endear us to Lino's character or possibly endear Gloria to Lino. This is despite the fact that he kidnapped her and is forcing her to commit crimes. He even frames her for a horrific, deadly act that puts her in the cross-hairs of federal agents. Yet, this film just as much condemns or criticizes the DEA as it does Los Estrellas.

It's weird how this film dirties both sides of this particular debate. It then turns to a third group, the CIA no less, as the saving grace. The screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer needlessly complicates the situation, if only to find a saving grace for Gloria that the original film lacked. Yet, the ending here feels a bit bittersweet as well.

Instead of being a look into a terrible situation from which for some, there is little escape, this movie wants to be a story of a Latin-American woman overcoming. What's strange about this remake is how it loses the original point of why this story was brought to the silver screen. That's okay, if its female empowerment turn had a bit more satisfying end. Gloria isn't a beauty pageant contestant herself. Her best friend is, so whatever statement could have been made about the corruption in that pageant is lost by removing Gloria from that situation. The whole pageant part becomes an afterthought.

This movie also comes in the immediate aftermath of the longest, government shutdown in American history, lasting 35 days. The shutdown was over a disagreement between President Donald Trump and the Congress. The disagreement involved the dispute over border security and immigration. Trump wanted billions of dollars to build a wall or large barrier across the U.S.-Mexico border, but the Democratic Party was highly opposed to that.

One of the points of contention was Trump's insistence that the wall would stop the flow of illegal trafficking, whether it's drug trafficking, weapons trafficking or even human trafficking. Democrats contended that a wall wouldn't stop that flow, as most drugs or weapons come through legal ports of entry. This film addresses that issue, supporting the Democrat's position, depicting trafficking occurring through a legal port of entry. Clint Eastwood's The Mule did the same.

I will say that Eastwood's film did make me more interested in the inner-workings of the cartel. I wanted to see more about Andy Garcia or Ignacio Serricchio's characters in The Mule. Here, I had the opposite feeling. Despite Córdova's raw sex appeal, I couldn't care less about his character. The movie wanted us to be intrigued by him, but I was at every turn simply repulsed.

Rated PG-13 for gun violence, sexual and drug content, and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 44 mins.