Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Admirable film.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A very engaging movie. It is a rather strange presentation. You know exactly what is happening but yet have no idea what is going on. That is to say the story itself, if not known before hand, is generally obvious throughout and by the end. Yet the main character Laura is never made clear what her actual involvement is. Why she is doing what she is doing. Her connection to the series of events is often confusing. I enjoyed the movie but it could have used some serious continuity improvement. Why do I have to have 10 lines? This makes ten. This makes eleven. How many more do they need? This now makes fourteen by my count.

Miss Bala was a riveting movie that abducts the audience taking them deep into the movie and leads them on an emotional heart-pounding ride. The film was a great success largely in part to the outstanding performance of Stephanie Sigman and the superb storytelling abilities that director Gerardo Naranjo displayed.The film had a good script that seemed natural and flowed very well as the movie progressed. Also, the cinematography was excellent as is did a great job submerging the audience right into the film. Often times the suspense was clenching as the camera focused into a still point on the protagonist and the audience mimicked the character wanting to see what was around the corner but hesitated to look because we all knew danger lurked. As the plot delved deeper, the lines dividing what we thought we knew get blurry. This feeling of confusion was amplified by Sigman's realistic performance. It was like an emotional 3D effect, where not only was the character unsure of what was going to happen the audience themselves were not too sure either. I didn't have to hear a cheesy narration (*cough, cough* Savages) to know just how the main character felt at any giving time, I could just see Sigman's face and know exactly how she felt. In the end the audience follows Sigman's character through thick and thin, wondering, worrying, try, failing, and is left at the mercy of the fate.Though this movie is a very well made, no movie is unblemished. A few flaws to point out is that the movie jumps from plausible to farfetch events. Also this movie may have a few plot holes that cannot be fully explained by anyone.The selected theaters is a key point to note a few things. This is not a typical action movie, this a drama/suspense film with action in it. This movie is not a good guys versus bad guys movie with a clear black and white distinction, this is a film that mirrors real life and has many shades of grey. This is not a mainstream movie that ends with a pretty bow wrapped around it, this is a film that leads to many questions about an issue that is very important in a beautiful country. This movie hits and it hits hard be prepared because most people that like "happily ever afters" is not part of that selected audience that needs to see this movie.

Drug-related crime in Mexico is not a unique subject for films, but no film in recent memory has confronted the issue with such force as Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala, a devastating look into the collusion between drug-related gangs and law enforcement. Caught in the middle is Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman), a 23-year-old unassuming woman of limited means whose dream is to enter and win the beauty pageant known as Miss Baja. Naranjo whose last film was called I'm Gonna Explode does just that, taking front and center stage in his most complete and mature work to date and Mexico's submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.Loosely based on actual events, right from the start we are dropped head first into the arena of the Mexican drug wars. Living at home with her father and young brother, Laura enters the competition for Miss Baja at the suggestion of her friend Suzu (Lakshmi Picazo), but she has no idea what she is getting into. Things start to go wrong almost immediately. Spending the evening with Suzu in a nightclub seems like a pleasant way to pass the evening. What she doesn't reckon with, however, is the eruption of gunfire in a hit carried out by a local cartel against agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Amidst the play of bursting bullets, Laura loses Suzu in the chaos.Seeking out a cop sitting outside in his car, she asks him for help in locating her friend. Big mistake. The corrupt cop leads her directly into the hands of a group of nameless terrorists led by local kingpin Lino Valdez (Noe Hernandez) who is in the middle of a war with Mexican and American drug enforcement agencies. After hiding out at her father's house nursing her injuries after being in the vicinity of a gun battle, Lino tells the impressionable Laura that he will help her find Suzu if she is willing to do favors for him. Forced to do the gang's bidding at the risk of losing her father and little brother and with no one to turn to for help, Laura becomes a passive and willing tool for those bent on greed and violence.Even the beauty pageant is rigged by the cartel so that Laura can be crowned as Miss Baja to the amazement of the audience and especially the more articulate and vivacious runner up. Fixing the pageant is not done out of kind feelings towards Laura but mainly to give her an audience with a high ranking general who is targeted for an assassination, even though it is murky as to who is working with whom. As Laura, Sigman elicits our empathy with her raw emotion and simple honesty. Like the Mexican people, she is powerless to prevent the brutality around her because all levels of society are complicit in its existence.Miss Bala is a powerful thriller that is not easy on the nerves but is worth sitting through if only to remind us of the depth of the problem which the director says, lies in the set of values which continue to govern our culture. According to Naranjo, "We have focused so much on the greed and getting ahead of the rest that we have lost sight of the fact that there has to be rules, and there has to be a way of doing things. Everybody is having his own battle to survive and the rules or the law don't exist, so I feel that we need a spiritual revolution." To that I can only say amen.

A damning indictment on the drugs trade in Mexico, this film highlights the plight of many that fall into the clutches of these gangs. I did enjoy the rough and ready style of filming; you really felt you were right in the heart of the action… maybe a little too close at times! Although I enjoyed it I did feel it was lacking a certain something. I think it was a sense of menace from the gang leader, Lino; he just didn't seem to have enough malice about him to make Laura fear him so much. Maybe I'm wrong but that's how I saw it. Over all though a film that's well worth a look (if you can do battle with the subtitles).SteelMonster's verdict: RECOMMENDEDMy score: 6.9/10You can find an expanded version of this review on my blog: Thoughts of a SteelMonster.