Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)

[Stay Puft]

MISS BALA
Director: Gerardo Naranjo

IMDb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1911600/)

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/miss-bala-poster.jpg

[baby doll]

This is up on karagarga.

[Ezee E]

Is this like the movie with the girl that takes a balloon of drugs over the border and gets oscar nominated out of it?

[Stay Puft]

I've slept on it but I still have no idea what to do with this movie.

Lots of long takes and slow, deliberate camera movement, which at first seems like a rigorous approach to the material but eventually just feels tepid. Some scenes crackle, particularly the more action oriented sequences, but then others just feel utterly inert. And while I usually find joy in artifice, there are some long takes here (like the one with the cop being dragged behind the truck) that are rather dull in their choreography.

But ultimately I suppose I didn't find the journey particularly illuminating, and in the end also somewhat unsatisfying. The story is ripped from the headlines, so to speak, and newspaper headlines is about the extent of what it has to offer (ending as it does with an abrupt cut to black and some statistics about the drug war). I found it engaging to a point while sitting in the theatre, but at the moment, a shrug is all I can seem to muster.

[transmogrifier]

Mixed-negative - the lead actress is well-cast for the blank fugue state she wanders around in for the entire movie. There may have been a point to that, but it guts the film of any narrative urgency or genuine audience involvement. It becomes a string of "and this happens too" public service announcements, and it's becomes stale by the end. That said, scenes work in isolation, and there is a layer of pessimistic dread that envelopes everything, probably accurately reflecting the lives of those caught up in the mess.