Miss Bala

بالا حاتن

After reading so much positive reviews about Miss Bala I thought I was going to be in for a treat but it turned out to be a great disappointment. It's just a weak movie with not much positive to say about. I thought it was extremely slow with a lot of moments where the story was going nowhere. About the main character played by Stephanie Sigman, if it was to make her look depressed for the whole movie then she did a good job. Don't expect a lot of great conversations because it's the opposite you will get. I'm sure the situation in Mexico regarding the corruption and the drug cartels is really bad but it's not like in Miss Bala. It's just not a good reflection of the situation there. Despise all the good reviews, to me this movie is boring. I even had to watch it in two times because I fell asleep the first time.

It reminds me a little of "Traffic," also about drugs and smuggling between Mexico and the US, only here the point of view is limited to that of Stephanie Sigman, as Laura Guerrero, who by happenstance wins the crown of Miss Baja, even while she has been kidnapped and used by a drug gang, La Estrella. (I wonder if there was any irony intended.) I understand this was "ripped from the headlines" or "based on a true story" but that rarely means much. Real life is confusing and full of adventitiousness. It's murky. Half the time we don't know what the hell is going on. Maybe that's why this film limits itself to Sigman's point of view. Several scenes are shot that way. The camera follows her around. She's in just about every scene. We get to know only what Stephanie Sigman's character knows. The audience is forced to identify with this innocent young woman, just as it was forced to identify with Janet Leigh in "Psycho." Briefly, Sigman tries to enter a beauty contest and attends a party in which a drug gang commits a kind of massacre. The gang captures her and thereafter she's their slave, forced to smuggle money into the US, subject to all sorts of sexual abuse, which is muted in the film. The gang know who she is, where she lives, and who is in her family. There's nothing much she can do. A gang leader drives her out into the desert, gives her some money, and tells her she can leave. "Just walk straight ahead and sooner or later you'll come to someplace. Just don't contact anyone you know, and don't ever go home." She doesn't leave. Would any of us? Sigman -- well, one can easily see how she might win a beauty contest. (They're as phony in Mexico as they are here, and they provide the only semi-comic moments in the film because they're such an easy target.) Sigman isn't a stunning beauty, but she's attractive enough and has a flawless figure. Catalina Sandina Moreno was attractive too, in the superior "Maria, Full of Grace." As the central figure, Sigman must carry the movie. Maybe she could have but the role is written with only one dimension possible. The young woman hardly has any lines because she's afraid to speak up. She's constantly baffled and terrified, and though it doesn't give the actress a chance to do much, it's understandable. She an unwilling witness to several shoot outs and a couple of really brutal murders. She walks through the movie with her mouth open and her head down. At that, it's an improvement over most of the commercial tripe being ground out in Hollywood. I've spent some time in Mexico, including Tijuana, some years ago but I don't think I'd do it again. The general impression I've gotten -- and not just from this movie -- is that the country and some of the border cities in the USA are beginning to resemble a Hobbesian world of all against all. Very little is what it seems to be. When Sigman is "captured" (after saving the life of a high-echelon anti-drug personage), the media trumpet the death of the gang members and the capture of Sigman, who is now considered a lawless bandit herself. But she's not sent to prison. After the police beat her, she's thrown out on the street. The heart sinks -- for her, for us, for a civilization whose center cannot hold.

Why are Mexican films so depressing? That's the question I find myself asking, having watched three recent slices of Mexican cinema: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, HELI, and now MISS BALA. Okay, so this isn't quite as write-slittingly miserable as REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, but it also lacks the style and gripping storytelling that made the Aronofsky film so compelling. In MISS BALA, the subject is once again Mexican drug gangs, and like HELI we follow the path of an innocent family drawn into an ugly world against their will. The protagonist in this movie is Laura, an attractive young woman who plans on entering a local beauty contest, only to find herself in the grip of some truly unpleasant characters thanks to some poor choices on her part. What follows will surprise nobody with knowledge of the crime and violence prevalent in modern-day Mexico. It's a grim, ugly movie, filled with stark bursts of violence and an unending level of misery directed at the lead. The performances are so naturalistic that they don't even exist; Stephanie Sigman seems to be sleepwalking through her role and as a result it's hard to feel much empathy for her character. Indeed, the whole film is just so nasty that you'll want to take a cold shower afterwards, even though none of it is particularly explicit. Hardly enjoyable viewing, but those interested in the subject matter might get something out of it. Me, I like stories with more suspense, more identifiable characters, people you can get to like and care about, stories that offer a measure of hope instead of unrelenting depression.

I gave this film a 7 instead of a 6 because, despite its late half problems, the film is quite watchable and absorbing...if not somewhat enigmatic. Laura is an ordinary Mexican girl who wants to cash in on her looks by becoming Miss Baja Mexico. Unfortunately, an outing with a friend at a popular club propels her into the midst of a drug cartel war where she is ultimately and easily taken hostage (thanks to a corrupt system) and then forced to involve herself in a string of illegal activities. Where this film begins to falter is with the personality of Laura. She sort of becomes an Elizabeth Smart, the young girl in Utah who was kidnapped from her home and forced to live with her captors and who, despite several good opportunities, never made an effort to escape or resist. Laura's passivity is distracting as we wonder what's wrong with her--is she shell- shocked, does she have Stockholm syndrome, is she just stupid? The director tries to convince us that her motivation to do as she's told comes from her desire to protect her little brother from any retaliatory flak that might come from her disobedience...but you never get the idea that she's being threatened in that way, especially in the last half of the film. I immediately thought of Maria, Full of Grace when I watched Miss Bala--a much better film about a young girl's involvement with the drug trade, with a solidly built narrative.

The drug cartels of northern Mexico have corrupted many aspects of life there; in 'Miss Bala', a depressingly believable story is told about how they event infect a beauty pageant. But exactly how or why is never quite clear: the plot in this film is muddled, the motivations of the lead character are never completely unravelled, and the limited budget is also only too obvious at times: lots of scenes are shot in close up in ways that doesn't serve the movie's purpose (nor clarify what is actually happening), but which was presumably cheaper than shooting wide-angle. In the end, one gets the broad picture, and the horror of individual episodes, but the two are not properly linked. It's a shame, as it's an important subject, and one of more dramatic potential had it been better executed.

As I said in my review of Inhale, Mexico comes across as being a very dangerous place to live. Everyone seems in cahoots with each other, and drugs are as easy to obtain as tap water. Why, even this pretty young girl who only wants to participate in a beauty pageant gets sucked into it all, and before long is taping money to her body to pay for stolen goods, and helping to assassinate world figures by going to bed with them. Life's a bitch, huh? There's something missing here. Despite all the pandemonium going on, I failed to really connect to any of the events, or become involved with the people therein. Perhaps its because Stephanie Sigman, besides being gorgeous, is far too passive in her role, so whether something bad or good occurs... we the audience fail to form a reciprocal relationship with her. Or maybe, the reason is down to all the major developments happening off-camera, and the bits we are shown seem rather dull in comparison. Whatever. All I know is my mood at the end was one of huge indifference, with hints of 'meh'ness. Hot poster, though. 5/10

MISS BALA (2012) *** Riveting drama about a young Mexican woman (sexy newcomer and Rosario Dawson doppelganger Stephanie Sigman in a fine big-screen debut) whose ambition to be a contestant in a beauty contest instead finds herself unavoidably thrust into a drug cartel's blood feud as an unwitting pawn and her inescapable predicament leads to dire life or death consequences. Based on a true account of the unending drug war South-of-the-Border and produced by actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (and co-star James Russo as a corrupt DEA agent), novice filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo certainly has the cinematic chops as a director with some ingenious camera movements and eliciting a heartbreaking performance from his equally green partner-in-crime leading lady.

...That the film lack continuity, for moments the cinematography was bad and it fail to punctuate its purpose... Other that remark corruption in the war against the organized crime, that all of Mexico its at war and that the cartels are winning and have the fire power to confront the Mexican army and federal police and the Mexican marines with not more that a few AK 47s and some grenades, if that was the purpose of the film then it is accomplished, but that is not the reality. total disappointment. In the other hand if the film is trying to clean up the original miss Sinaloa that was captured a couple of years ago with members of the Juarez cartel, then I would say that they did a good job in that regard. Mexican people is losing the war against the organized crime in México, but they are not winning either.

I like foreign language films and this is right up there as one which can be enjoyed from beginning to end. It is a Mexican film in Spanish language with perfect subtitles in English on DVD. The story is of course about a young girl called Laura who has a dream of becoming a Beauty queen while also being a story about how she gets caught up and used in a drugs war. There is no doubt that Laura is portrayed as a very stubborn character and is presented with opportunities to escape from her dangerous situations but she is possessed of fear what might happen to her Father and Brother. She has seen that the Mexican police could not be trusted, so who could she trust? The film also illustrates how a drug cartel might also influence the outcome of a Beauty pageant to instill fear and control over one of its participants. Yes it is a little depressing but a riveting drama thriller to watch. Considering the subject matter, there is nothing graphically sexual and no outlandish bad language, there are a couple of sex scenes but the filming generally is carefully considered and respectable.