Miss Bala

Mexican writer/director Gerardo Naranjo’s brutal political crime thriller Miss Bala tells the story of Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman), a young woman from Tijuana whose desire to participate in a beauty pageant gets her deeply involved with gang that is terrorizing much of her country. The film is loosely based on the 2008’s Miss Sinaloa scandal in which pageant winner Laura Zúñiga was arrested when found in a truck with several gang members and weapons. Using this premise and many other depressing facts about Mexico’s endless drug war, Naranjo crafts a neo-noir that feels highly authentic but is not very engaging. While Naranjo is a virtuosic director in several scenes, creating amazing tracking shots and long takes that pull us into the world of his main character, there are just as many scenes that lie limp on the screen as if the director is bored. The film is told from Laura’s limited perspective, which would be an interesting way to tell this story were it not that too much of what we see does not give us any insight into what she’s thinking or feeling. I assume the point Naranjo is making is that there is no insight to gain; that the Mexican drug war is needlessly destroying thousands of lives a year and anyone participating in it--by buying drugs or by buying into drug prohibition--is guilty of contributing to the problem. This sense of condemnation and hopelessness comes across clearly in this unsentimental, unglamorized film, but the lack of an engaging and cohesive narrative keeps the audience from caring to the extent I imagine Naranjo would have liked.