Genre: Crime/Drama
Related Titles: Miss Bala, Sicario, La Linea
By Leanne Harragan
Gloria finds herself in trouble when her friend is kidnapped and she is handed over to the cartel. Gang leader, Lino, uses Gloria to avoid detection from the DEA. Gloria takes matters into her own hands and tries to outwit not only the cartel but the DEA agents who begin to track her down.
Miss Bala is a relatively exciting crime thriller that despite struggling to find it's balance between a feature film and a straight to TV film, it has enough going for it to keep the audience on it's toes and has excellent female friendship. It's based on an earlier film of the same name from 2011 and while it's a bit of tick box exercise in creating tension, it's an enjoyable watch.
The story of this film feel very familiar, with a drug cartel in Mexico being a key element in it, it feels similar to recent films like Sicario and La Linea, the use of a female as the main character makes a change as usually female characters are far and few between. There were a few moments that should've had a bigger emotional punch but these moments failed to hit home for me because some of the characters involved were undeveloped and seemed to be more of a token character slotted for the sake of it. This could easily be solved by spending less time on fight scenes and more time solidifying and introducing characters.
Action and fight scenes are another area of this film that fell as little short, a lot of them are fast paced and tend to focus on Gloria or another main character through the use of quick cutting and zoomed in shots. This made it harder to gauge the whole picture of what was going on in the fight and the fast paced cutting at times was a little hard to follow. I think the film could have occasionally benefited from a wider shot and a slower pace. The constant pace of the film did get a little tiring as things jumped from plot to plot quite quickly.
The highlight of this film was in the final moments when Gloria finally took matters into her own hands and basically just sacked off all the men around her, whether DEA or crime gang Las Estrellas (that she unintentionally infiltrated.) The moment she realised that no one was coming to save her, she took matters into her own hands and honestly it's a pretty satisfying moment.
If nothing else comes of this film, I hope that Gina Rodriguez gets more recognition and get's more roles as she definitely deserves them. Her performance as Gloria is solid, she is truly the embodiment of female empowerment and her ability to fight through everything is impressive. I loved the friendship that was shown between Gloria and Suzu (Christina Rodlo), it's always great to see real friendships being shown on the big screen, Gloria's continued search to find Suzu no matter what happened to her felt very real and relatable.
While Miss Bala is not the most original of films and has some problems along the way, it creates tension and keeps the audience guessing. Rodriguez shines as Gloria and will definitely join the ranks of badass women of film due to her quick thinking and ability to double cross the double crossers.
Miss Bala is a relatively exciting crime thriller that despite struggling to find it's balance between a feature film and a straight to TV film, it has enough going for it to keep the audience on it's toes and has excellent female friendship. It's based on an earlier film of the same name from 2011 and while it's a bit of tick box exercise in creating tension, it's an enjoyable watch.
The story of this film feel very familiar, with a drug cartel in Mexico being a key element in it, it feels similar to recent films like Sicario and La Linea, the use of a female as the main character makes a change as usually female characters are far and few between. There were a few moments that should've had a bigger emotional punch but these moments failed to hit home for me because some of the characters involved were undeveloped and seemed to be more of a token character slotted for the sake of it. This could easily be solved by spending less time on fight scenes and more time solidifying and introducing characters.
Action and fight scenes are another area of this film that fell as little short, a lot of them are fast paced and tend to focus on Gloria or another main character through the use of quick cutting and zoomed in shots. This made it harder to gauge the whole picture of what was going on in the fight and the fast paced cutting at times was a little hard to follow. I think the film could have occasionally benefited from a wider shot and a slower pace. The constant pace of the film did get a little tiring as things jumped from plot to plot quite quickly.
The highlight of this film was in the final moments when Gloria finally took matters into her own hands and basically just sacked off all the men around her, whether DEA or crime gang Las Estrellas (that she unintentionally infiltrated.) The moment she realised that no one was coming to save her, she took matters into her own hands and honestly it's a pretty satisfying moment.
If nothing else comes of this film, I hope that Gina Rodriguez gets more recognition and get's more roles as she definitely deserves them. Her performance as Gloria is solid, she is truly the embodiment of female empowerment and her ability to fight through everything is impressive. I loved the friendship that was shown between Gloria and Suzu (Christina Rodlo), it's always great to see real friendships being shown on the big screen, Gloria's continued search to find Suzu no matter what happened to her felt very real and relatable.
While Miss Bala is not the most original of films and has some problems along the way, it creates tension and keeps the audience guessing. Rodriguez shines as Gloria and will definitely join the ranks of badass women of film due to her quick thinking and ability to double cross the double crossers.
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