“Gloria!”

From Miss Bala.

When Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) travels from her California home down to Tijuana, Mexico to help her friend Suzu (Cristina Rodio) prepare for a beauty pageant, she is expecting nothing but sun, fun, and catching up with Suzu’s little brother Chavo (Sebastián Cano).  However, when the nightclub the women are celebrating at is attacked by a small group of cartel members because the chief of police is also at the party, Gloria’s life is thrown into chaos.  Desperately searching for Suzu, Gloria tells the wrong person that she saw the men responsible for the shooting and is kidnapped by the cartel leader Lino (Ismael Cruz Córdova).  Lino agrees to help Gloria find Suzu as long as she forgets his connection to the shooting and does a favor for him; in for more than she bargained for, that favor quickly places Gloria at odds with the DEA who hold her responsible for a destroyed safe house.  A DEA agent (Matt Lauria) uses Gloria’s involvement to force her back to Lino and his crew as a mole.  Because she is an American, Gloria finds herself as a cartel mule, driving weapons and drugs back-and-forth across the border meeting meeting both Americans (such as Anthony Mackie) and Mexicans (such as Ricardo Abarca) connected through the corrupt web that Lino controls.  Caught between the law and the outlaw, Gloria has no one to count on except herself to save herself and Suzu without letting anyone know what she’s doing.

This English remake of the Spanish-language original of the same name is a complex ride of genuine emotion and dramatic thrills.  While the guns-blazing action is not evenly spread throughout the movie, there is enough (and in the right places) to make everything feel complete.  Rodriguez does very well to portray a woman who is alone and confused.  Some viewers might have trouble following the dialog (especially without subtitles) as it often bounces back-and-forth between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence.  Miss Bala is a slower-burning thriller that still easily manages to be a strongly enjoyable movie.

| Rated: PG-13 | Running Time: 104 minutes |Genre: action/thriller |

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 3* of 10|Nudity: 0.5 of 10|Sexuality: 0 of 10|Gore: 3 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|