Miss Bala (2011 film)

Last updated

Miss Bala
Miss Bala UK poster.jpg
Cinematic release poster
Directed byGerardo Naranjo
Written byGerardo Naranjo
Mauricio Katz
Produced byPablo Cruz
Starring Stephanie Sigman
Cinematography Mátyás Erdély
Edited byGerardo Naranjo
Music by Emilio Kauderer
Production
companies
Distributed byFox International Productions [1] (through 20th Century Fox)
Release dates
  • 13 May 2011 (2011-05-13)(Cannes)
  • 9 September 2011 (2011-09-09)(Mexico)
Running time
113 minutes [2]
CountryMexico
LanguageSpanish
Box office$427,815 [3]

Miss Bala (Spanish for "Miss Bullet") [4] is a 2011 Mexican crime action thriller [5] film written by Gerardo Naranjo with Mauricio Katz and directed by Gerardo Naranjo. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. [6] [7] The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, [8] [9] but it did not make the final shortlist. [10] An American remake was made in 2019.

Contents

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. 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 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 DEA 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

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. 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." [11]

Reception

On its release at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Miss Bala received praise from critics. [12] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 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." [13] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating to reviews, the film has an average score of 79 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [14]

Remake

In 2017, it was announced Catherine Hardwicke would direct a remake of the film, from a screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, starring Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, and Anthony Mackie. [15] [16] [17] [18] It was released on 1 February 2019, by Columbia Pictures. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diego Luna</span> Mexican actor (born 1979)

Diego Dionisio Luna Alexander is a Mexican actor, director, and producer. He is known for his portrayal of Cassian Andor in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the Disney+ series Andor, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Television Series Drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Hardwicke</span> American filmmaker (born 1955)

Helen Catherine Hardwicke is an American film director, production designer, and screenwriter. Her directorial work includes Thirteen (2003), which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, the film's co-star, Lords of Dogtown (2005), The Nativity Story (2006), Twilight (2008), Red Riding Hood (2011), Plush (2013), Miss You Already (2015), Miss Bala (2019), and Prisoner's Daughter (2022).

<i>Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion</i> 1970 Italian crime drama film

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is a 1970 Italian crime drama film directed by Elio Petri, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Florinda Bolkan. It is a psychological, black-humored satire on corruption in high office, telling the story of a top police officer who kills his mistress, and then tests whether the police would charge him for this crime. He begins manipulating the investigation by planting obvious clues while the other police officers ignore them, either intentionally or not.

<i>Carmen</i> (1983 film) 1983 Spanish film

Carmen is a 1983 Spanish film adaptation of the novel Carmen by Prosper Mérimée, using music from the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. It was directed and choreographed in the flamenco style by Carlos Saura and María Pagés. It is the second part of Saura's flamenco trilogy in the 1980s, preceded by Bodas de sangre and followed by El amor brujo. The film was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at the 56th Academy Awards.

<i>The Orphanage</i> (2007 film) 2007 supernatural horror film

The Orphanage is a 2007 gothic supernatural horror film and the debut feature of J. A. Bayona. The film stars Belén Rueda as Laura, Fernando Cayo as her husband, Carlos, and Roger Príncep as their adopted son Simón. The plot centers on Laura, who returns to her childhood home, an orphanage. Laura plans to turn the house into a home for disabled children, but after an argument with Simón, he goes missing.

Kevin Misher is an American movie and television producer via his Los Angeles-based production company, Misher Films.

<i>A Cab for Three</i> 2001 film by Orlando Lübbert

A Cab for Three is a 2001 Chilean crime comedy-drama film directed by Orlando Lubbert. It was Chile's submission to the 74th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee.

<i>A Prophet</i> 2009 film by Jacques Audiard

A Prophet is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the prison hierarchy, becoming a mob associate and drug trafficker as he is absorbed into the Corsican mafia and then ingratiates himself into the Maghrebi crime syndicate.

<i>The Silent House</i> (2010 film) 2010 Uruguayan film

The Silent House is a 2010 Uruguayan horror film directed by Gustavo Hernández. The film is supposedly inspired by real events that took place in the 1940s, but no information can be found to authenticate the aforementioned claims. A small-budget film originally intended for local audiences, it has achieved success in several important international film festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival. At the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau presented an English-language remake titled Silent House, starring Elizabeth Olsen.

<i>The Hunt</i> (2012 film) 2012 film directed by Thomas Vinterberg

The Hunt is a 2012 Danish psychological drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg and starring Mads Mikkelsen. Set in a small Danish village around Christmas, the film follows a man named Lucas, a divorced kindergarten teacher who becomes the target of mass hysteria after being wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child in his class.

<i>Renoir</i> (film) 2012 French drama film by Gilles Bourdos

Renoir is a 2012 French drama film based on the last years of Pierre-Auguste Renoir at Cagnes-sur-Mer during World War I. The film was directed by Gilles Bourdos and competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The film is set in the south of France during World War I and stars Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, Thomas Doret and Vincent Rottiers.

<i>The German Doctor</i> 2013 film

The German Doctor is a 2013 Argentine historical drama film directed, produced, and written by Lucía Puenzo, based on her own novel Wakolda (2011). The film stars Àlex Brendemühl as Nazi SS officer and physician Josef Mengele, infamous for performing human experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It also stars Florencia Bado, Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti, Elena Roger, and Guillermo Pfening.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephanie Sigman</span> Mexican-American actress

Stephanie Sigman is a Mexican-American actress. Her breakthrough role was in the 2011 Mexican crime drama film Miss Bala. She has gone on to appear in Pioneer (2013), Spectre (2015), Going Under (2016), and Annabelle: Creation (2017). On television, Sigman starred in Narcos (2015) and S.W.A.T (2017) for the first and second seasons of both series.

<i>Neruda</i> (film) 2016 film

Neruda is a 2016 internationally co-produced biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín. Mixing history and fiction, the film shows the dramatic events of the suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how the poet, diplomat, politician and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda had to go on the run, eventually escaping on horseback over the Andes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noé Hernández (actor)</span> Mexican actor

Noé Hernández Álvarez is a Mexican actor. Following his studies of Dramatic Arts at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, he became a high school teacher and founded an experimental theater group. After relocating to Mexico City he was offered little roles on several films, including Propiedad Ajena and Sin Nombre. His first lead role was Lino Valdez in Miss Bala, gaining popular recognition and earning a nomination for an Ariel Award for Best Actor.

<i>Woman at War</i> 2018 film directed by Benedikt Erlingsson

Woman at War is a 2018 Icelandic-Ukrainian comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Benedikt Erlingsson, and starring Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir.

<i>Miss Bala</i> (2019 film) 2019 film directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Miss Bala is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on the 2011 Mexican film of the same name. The film stars Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, and Anthony Mackie, and follows a woman who trains to take down a Mexican drug cartel after her friend is kidnapped.

Cristina Rodlo (born May 21, 1990) is a Mexican actress who appeared as Isabel Urrutia Zavaleta in 93 episodes of Vuelve Temprano and 23 episodes of El Vato (2017). She has starred in feature films as Fabiana in Perdida and as Suzu in the 2019 remake of Miss Bala, and played a lead role as Ambar in the horror movie No One Gets Out Alive in 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 Abrams, Rachel (28 April 2011). "Fox to distrib 'Miss Bala' in Mexico". Variety . Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  2. "Miss Bala << British Board of Film Classification". British Board of Film Classification. 17 August 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2011.
  3. "Miss Bala (2012) - Financial Information". The Numbers.
  4. Bailey-Millado, Rob (31 January 2019). "'Miss Bala' is a misfire — but star Gina Rodriguez is a direct hit" . Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  5. "Miss Bala (2012) - Gerardo Naranjo". AllMovie .
  6. "Festival de Cannes: Official Selection". Cannes. Archived from the original on 15 May 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  7. "Cannes film festival 2011: The full lineup". guardian.co.uk. London. 14 April 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  8. Hecht, John (22 September 2011). "'Miss Bala' Crowned Mexico's Foreign-Language Oscar Submission". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
  9. "63 Countries Vie for 2011 Foreign Language Film Oscar". oscars.org. Archived from the original on 18 May 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2011.
  10. "9 Foreign Language Films Vie for Oscar". Archived from the original on 18 May 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
  11. Matt Barone (21 January 2012). "Interview: "Miss Bala" Director Gerardo Naranjo Talks Mexico's Drug Wars, Beauty Queen Victims & Un-Hollywood Action". Complex. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  12. Kaufman, Anthony (15 May 2011). "'Miss Bala' Subverts Criminal Thriller Genre at Cannes 2011". The Wall Street Journal . Dow Jones & Company . Retrieved 19 May 2011.
  13. "Miss Bala (2012)". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  14. "Miss Bala (2011) Reviews". Metacritic . Red Ventures . Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  15. Fleming, Mike Jr. (4 April 2017). "Catherine Hardwicke To Helm 'Miss Bala' Remake; Gina Rodriguez Courted". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  16. N'Duka, Amanda (15 May 2017). "Gina Rodriguez Set To Star In 'Miss Bala', Ismael Cruz Córdova Cast As Male Lead". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  17. Lang, Brent (23 April 2018). "'Miss Bala,' Animated Spider-Man Show Sony's Commitment to Diverse Heroes". Variety . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  18. Kroll, Justin (19 July 2017). "Matt Lauria and Cristina Rodlo Join Gina Rodriguez in 'Miss Bala' Remake (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  19. D'Alessandro, Anthony (2 March 2018). "Sony Dates Trio For 2019: 'Miss Bala', 'A Dog's Way Home' & 'The Crow'". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 22 July 2018.