Real-life heroines overcome iffy script
Miss Bala
(out of 4) Starring Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Cordova. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. 104 minutes. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. PG
Beauty contests are nothing but trouble, right?
Look what happens to Gloria, a Hollywood makeup artist, when she goes south of the border to help out friend Suzu, who’s competing in a Tijuana beauty competition. Wellarmed criminals invade a nightclub and kidnap Gloria while Suzu disappears.
Gloria soon becomes a pawn, caught between the criminal gang and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, in an increasingly ruthless game. Lino, the head of the gang, seeks to draw her closer and deeper into his plan to kill a corrupt senior police official.
The movie, based on a 2011 Spanish-language version, is helmed by a female director — Catherine Hardwicke — and that fact shows, in ways that will not perhaps please those expecting a raw action film with an avenging ninja heroine. In particular, Hardwicke goes against the tide in refusing to portray Tijuana as it is typically: a sleazy Third World cesspool.
Rodriguez, best known for her lead role in the CW series Jane the Virgin, plays Gloria with a mixture of pluck and vulnerability in a nuanced way that feels authentic and real under the circumstances. She may be in way over her head, aggrieved and terrified, but she draws on her internal resources and bides her time, awaiting the op- portunity to rescue her friend and maybe get a little payback.
Ismael Cruz Cord ovai satantali zing villa in in the role of Lino, wily and dangerous. His efforts to woo Gloria, Stockholm-syndrome-style, are among the film’s best moments, filled with tension and sexual heat.
However, the script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcoer is a bit of a letdown, riddled with plot holes and implausibilities that sap the movie of some of its kinetic energy. (For example, the leg wound Lino incurs during a shootout with the cops barely slows his stride.)
Hardwicke gets the mood and pace right, though, and handles the action scenes effectively, leading to a climax that is cathartically pleasing, while Rodriguez’s nicely balanced performance has the audience rooting for all the way.