Miss Bala is a remake of the 2011 Mexican film with the same title (“bala” is Spanish for “bullet”….not sure why they didn’t translate the title after going through the trouble of remaking the entire goddamn movie for Americans). The original film is a brutal, bleak, depressing R-rated drama. The trailers for this new version presented it as a PG-13 action film. As you might imagine, that made me confused. Surprisingly, this is neither of those things. It is neither representative of its source material or its own advertising, leaving me wondering why this was made and who it was made for. While not terrible, Miss Bala is a forgettable film that is only interesting as an examination of how Hollywood can strip all of the impact and balls out of something.
Gina Rodriguez plays an idiot named Gloria that hangs out in shitty places with shitty people and, consequently, finds herself in a shitty situation. While visiting her friend Suzu in Mexico, the girls decide to hang out in a nightclub loaded with drug dealers and the place becomes the scene of a massive gang shooting. Attempting to find Suzu, Gloria is quickly kidnapped by the cartel responsible for the shooting and forced to do their bidding.
The basic gist of the plot as I just described is the same as the original film. The difference is an amazing change in tone between the two versions. The Mexican version presents the cartels as absolute monsters and the film is an effective commentary on how drug culture destroys lives. The lead girl in the original film is brutally raped and beaten, people are executed and dragged behind trucks, the ending is depressing as fuck and the entire thing makes you want to take a shower after watching it. But the film is well-made, impactful and gets its point across. This American version, not so much. Here, drug dealers are all young and good-looking and spend much of their time throwing bitchin’ parties loaded with booze and bikini-wearing girls. The violence is glossy Hollywood violence without bloodshed or human consequence. The sexual abuse is only implied. The original ends with her as a PTSD-riddled, broken-down shell of herself left to wonder the streets in a ghetto after her whole world has been destroyed. This ends with her being recruited by the CIA to kick drug-dealer ass, an ending that almost comes across as a parody of American films. The horrors of gang violence and drug abuse are not PG-13 material and the fact that this version was neutered to make it marketable to teens does a disservice to both the material and the audience.
Oddly, though, it’s also not the action film that is promised by the trailers. If you go into this expecting something like Death Wish, you are going to be very disappointed. All of the promotional materials featuring Gina Rodriguez with an assault rifle are taken from the last 5 minutes of the movie. The rest of the film is her trying to survive while in the captivity of the cartel (which only seems to have about 6 or 7 members, by the way). In place of the brutality of the original, we get pretty much every cliché that you can think of to fill in the time: the gang suspects a mole in their operation, there is an undercover agent, there are physics-defying shootouts with the DEA, etc. It’s pretty paint-by-numbers stuff for this kind of film.
If I didn’t have the original film as a point of comparison, this would just be passable. The movie doesn’t do anything interesting, but it doesn’t do anything particularly poorly either if you just consider it on its own merits. Gina Rodriguez (who I last saw in the excellent Annihilation) is a talented and gorgeous actress that proves her ability to carry a film. Her character is underwritten and has an absurd arc, but she still infuses the role with enough grit and personality that the film still (mostly) holds your attention. The pacing is quick enough and the action scenes (though ridiculous) are decent. On the whole, when considered in isolation, it is just a forgettable thriller with a lead performance that is stronger than the material.
The original Miss Bala is a purposefully sleazy film. This new version scrubs off all of the grime until it is both shiny and pointless. The message of the original film is lost, or at least stripped of all of its potency, and is replaced by a confused marketing experiment. If you want an action film, don’t watch this. If you want a serious drama, watch the original. If you want to keep your kids away from gangs, definitely show them the original. If you want to kill 90 minutes and aren’t particularly picky about how you do it, then sure. Miss Bala can do that for you. Just don’t expect to remember it an hour later.
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Miss_Bala_poster.jpg
