''Miss Bala'' (Spanish for "Miss Bullet") is a 2011 Mexican action thriller film written by Gerardo Naranjo with Mauricio Katz and directed by Gerardo Naranjo. The film premiered in the

Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...

section at the

2011 Cannes Film Festival The 64th Cannes Film Festival was held from 11 to 22 May 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition and French filmmaker Michel Gondry headed the jury for the short film competition. South Ko ...

. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the

Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

at the 84th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. An American remake was made in 2019.

Plot

23-year-old Laura Guerrero (Sigman) lives with her father Ramón (Javier Zaragoza) and little brother Arturo (Juan Carlos Galván). Laura and her friend Suzu (Lakshmi Picazo) both enter the competition for the Miss Baja

beauty pageant A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...

. They go to the Millennium Night Club, where Suzu meets her boyfriend Javi (Hugo Márquez). However, when Laura goes into the bathroom, she witnesses members of the La Estrella gang causing chaos by shooting and killing a number of

DEA The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic enf ...

officers and nightclub-goers. Frantic, she tries to search for Suzu, and as a result fails to show up for the early rehearsal for the pageant and is ejected from the competition. She is then kidnapped by the leader of the La Estrella gang, Lino (Noé Hernández), and the gang also kidnap her brother and father as bargaining chips to control her. Laura is used by the gang for criminal missions, including transporting drug money across the US border, and luring out a

agent who has infiltrated the organization (José Yenque). The climax of the film occurs after Laura wins the Miss Baja contest; she attempts to escape, but is recovered and later raped. The gang uses her to seduce a prominent military general (Miguel Courtrier); but she switches sides when she learns that Suzu had been a casualty in the nightclub shooting. She manages to survive the ensuing shoot-out, but is captured by the military, beaten, and paraded as a member of the gang. Laura is taken away by the police and dropped off at an undisclosed location.

Cast

* Stephanie Sigman as Laura Guerrero *

Irene Azuela Irene Azuela (born October 27, 1979) is a British-born Mexican actress and producer. Career Irene Azuela began her career as an actress in 2000's in TV Azteca with three telenovelas: ''Todo por amor'', ''Amores querer con alevosía'' and ''La ...

as Jessica Berlanga *

Miguel Couturier Miguel Couturier (29 September 1950 – 3 January 2012) was a Mexican actor. He appeared in more than 50 films and television shows between 1983 and 2012. He died on 12 January 2012 from a pancreatic cancer. His son Andrés Couturier is als ...

as General Salomón Duarte * Gabriel Heads as Agent Bell * Noé Hernández as Lino Valdez * James Russo as Jimmy * Lakshmi Picazo as Suzu * José Yenque as Kike Cámara

Real life incident

''Miss Bala'' is loosely based on a real incident, in which 2008's Miss Sinaloa, Laura Zúñiga, was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled with munitions outside

Guadalajara, Jalisco Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Mexico, while the Guadalaj ...

. In an interview with Complex Magazine, director Gerardo Naranjo said that he had met Zúñiga, but that "I really didn’t want to go into their psyches. I guess the film has a very strong point-of-view, and we refuse to get into the minds of these guys, because I think that’s what every other movie does… I wanted to live the experience from the point-of-view of an innocent person."

Reception

On its release at the

, ''Miss Bala'' received praise from critics. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Miss Bala''s subject is loaded enough, but the frantic and muscular filmmaking puts this movie in a whole new league." At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a

weighted mean The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

rating to reviews, the film has an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 79 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Remake

In 2017, it was announced

Catherine Hardwicke Helen Catherine HardwickeAccording to the State of Texas. ''Texas Birth Index, 1903–1997''. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California. (born October 21, 1955) is an American film director, p ...

would direct a remake of the film, from a screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, starring

Gina Rodriguez Gina Alexis Rodriguez-LoCicero (born July 30, 1984) is an American actress. She is known for her leading role as Jane Villanueva in The CW satirical romantic dramedy series ''Jane the Virgin'' (2014–2019), for which she received a Golden Glob ...

Ismael Cruz Córdova Ismael Enrique Cruz Córdova (born April 7, 1987) is a Puerto Rican actor who gained national attention playing Mando on ''Sesame Street''. Cruz also had a role in the Showtime original series ''Ray Donovan'', and in the third season of ''Berlin ...

, and Anthony Mackie. It was released on 1 February 2019, by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Miss Bala 20th Century Fox films 2011 films 2011 action thriller films 2010s Spanish-language films Mexican action thriller films Action films based on actual events Films about beauty pageants Films about Mexican drug cartels Films set in Tijuana 2010s Mexican films