Beauty queen turns pawn in Mexico’s ‘Miss Bala’

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When drug lords kidnap her from a Tijuana nightclub, Laura (Stephanie Sigman) is forced to serve as a driver and mule in “Miss Bala.”

Updated: February 28, 2012 8:08AM

Fast and furious, “Miss Bala” is a hair-raising actioner that thrusts a Mexican girl into the thick of a drug war between local gangsters and U.S. narcs. The setting is Baja California, depicted as a lawless region where armed drug cartels have perpetrated 36,000 murders since 2006 in connivance with the police. Director and co-writer Gerardo Naranjo shows with sickening matter-of-factness the drug traffickers’ ruthless violence.

Unlike mainstream gangster tales, however, there is nothing very consoling about the ending or, indeed, any part of the film. A brooding sense of despair and helplessness pervades the script, more in the mood of a horror film than a shoot-em-up.

From the very first shot, the story is told through the eyes of the innocent Laura (model-turned-actress Stephanie Sigman, in her feature film debut). A tall, willowy girl from a poor family in Tijuana, she dreams of participating in a beauty pageant with her best friend, Suzu. Their plans take a nasty turn in a gangland disco. Laura is in the bathroom when armed men start firing on the dancers.

As an eyewitness, she’s kidnapped by the hitmen. Her ravishing looks may be her salvation because instead of killing her, the inscrutable drug lord Lino (Noe Hernandez) forces “the skinny girl” to become a driver and drug runner. They call her “Miss Bala” (“bala” means “bullet”).

From here, the film races through a chain of escalating violence, tension, smoke and gunfire. The gang lords appear to control the police but not the U.S. DEA agents who are their implacable enemies. They speed through Baja in SUVs and huge trucks full of corpses as the action shifts unexpectedly, leaving the viewer uncertain what will happen next.

To save her father and brother, Laura lets Lino tape wads of money around her waist. She gets past U.S. border police and is flown in a small plane to a rendezvous with Lino’s American cohort (James Russo), who sends her back with fresh weapons and ammo. But someone has betrayed them, and when Laura arrives in Baja, trouble is waiting.

Like the Italian film “Gomorrah” (2008), which described the way the organized crime operates in Naples, “Miss Bala” derives much of its interest from its insider’s view of drug traffickers who live in symbiosis with the police. None of these killing machines emerges as a character apart from Lino, who’s barely there. The line between good guys and bad guys is so blurred that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish friend from foe.

The only alternative the film offers to the world of crime and murder is the surreal setting of the Miss Baja California contest, a rigged TV event whose tinsely glitter even Laura sees through.

Sigman emerges as an actress with a strong presence, if little range; she’s a courageous victim who earns sympathy even when being forced, as she frequently is, to strip for her captors. “Miss Bala” deftly depicts a harrowing world.

Hollywood Reporter