Miss Bala

Miss Bala is an action, drama based on a Spanish language version starring Gina Rodriguez. Gina played Gloria Fuentes, a makeup artist from Los Angeles. When Gloria heads to Tijuana to support her friend, Suzu Ramós, during the Miss Baja California pageant, they run into some trouble with a local gang and Gloria has to step outside her comfort zone to protect them both.

I like Gina Rodriguez, so, as much as I had a feeling this movie wasn’t going to be good, I still wanted to give it a chance for her. I enjoyed Gina’s portal Gloria; the growing confidence and ability to take her power back in this male dominated, corrupt world, however there was a lot that I didn’t like.

The plot was interesting but there were major holes in it and quite a few parts that were not realistic. This movie is supposed to cover a period of 3 days and it was just impractical, due to a serious lack in character development, how a make-up artist with no previous gun experience was able to survive multiple shoot outs with career criminals. Her relationship with the gang leader and how much he choose to trust her also didn't make sense because of the short amount of time they actually spent together. I also thought that there was too much English laced in this movie, since it was supposed to be based in Mexico. I really don't think in real life everyone would be as fluent as they all were in English.

Richard Roeper, a well-known writer and movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times said, "run away from Gina Rodriguez's ludicrous drug running shoot-em-up... Miss Bala is an early contender for a spot on my list of the worst movies of 2019." Since I choose to watch this at home, I didn’t have as visceral of a reaction as Roeper did to the film. After watching I’d say it’s not worth seeing in theatres, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen this year either. This is the type of movie that you can put on when you are bored and are down to take a ride with a movie that you can check out on because it won’t make any sense in the end.