So a couple days ago, I took myself to the movies and saw Miss Bala, which WOW, that trailer was misleading. It wasn’t misleading in a bad way, at least in my opinion, but I can see where some people may have gone to see it expecting one movie, and then they got an entirely DIFFERENT movie.

So what was this movie, billed as an intense action-thriller starring Gina Rodriguez ruining a whole bunch of men’s lives in an incredible red dress?

So hear me out, in some ways, it was exactly that. But it was also so much more.

So let’s learn all about the incredible power of female friendship because, and I cannot stress this enough, THAT’S what Miss Bala is really about.

THE PLOT

The movie begins following Gloria Fuentes (Gina Rodriguez), a professional makeup artist who dreams of being more and maybe like even a designer one day instead of following the same old boring canned designs? She and the audience get a grim in-your-face reminder of her position when her supervisor flat-out says “we don’t pay you to think.”

Great, thanks for that.

But it can only bring her down for so long, because after the fashion show, Gloria heads down to Tijuana, Mexico to spend the weekend with her best friend Suzu (Cristina Rodlo). Suzu is entering the Miss Baja California pageant, and Gloria, naturally, will be her makeup artist. There’s a really fun scene where they sign up and the pageant coordinator gives her a once-over and Gloria’s all “oh yeah I’m not entering” and the coordinator just full-out Regina George is like “oh I didn’t think so.” (Like?? has she SEEN Gina Rodriguez???) Suzu takes on the audience’s reaction and is ready to THROW DOWN with this coordinator, but Gloria talks her out of it.

Later that night, Gloria is practicing Suzu’s makeup and they have a really sweet heart-to-heart about how they’re family and all and Suzu gives Gloria this dorky adorable friendship bracelet she made her and it’s all very nice.

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT HAPPY STUFF, we cut to Suzu and Gloria heading to a club to shmooze with some of the pageant higher-ups (Suzu drops the plot point here that the chief of police tends to sleep with the pageant winner every year BUT IT’S A RUMOR OKAY EVERYTHING’S FINE). Gloria heads to the bathroom after Mr. Chief of Police GROPES her, but she doesn’t want to ruin Suzu’s chance at winning, so she just quietly leaves. In the stall, though, she sees and hears a group of guys break in through the ceiling vent and um, they got guns. One of them finds Gloria and pulls her out, which is where she first makes eye contact with the leader, Lino Esparza (Ismael Cruz Cordova). Though egged on to shoot Gloria because she’s seen them, Lino seems to find her intriguing because she’s an American. He tells her she has ten seconds to get out.

Gloria desperately tries to get to Suzu in the crowded club, but it’s too late-the guys open fire on the club and it’s chaos. Gloria barely makes it out, but she still cannot find Suzu (though she keeps passing girls who could be her, but they keep getting shot or hurt and it’s jarring). She ends up spending the night in a cafe with other survivors, with Suzu not answering her phone. Gloria finds a policeman outside, says she’s a survivor and she saw the men who did this. The policeman offers to take her to the station, but something’s wrong. Instead, he takes her to a hotel, and she is grabbed by none other than Lino Esparza’s men.

She is later barely able to escape after being forced to leave a car with a bomb inside parked outside a safehouse. Because of this, she is captured by the DEA, and told she will only be released if she delivers Lino to the DEA.

The rest of the movie is a tense back-and-forth between Gloria and her life with Esparza’s men, all while desperately searching for Suzu. Can she save Suzu and escape from a life of crime, or will she be forced to live out her days as a slave to Esparza’s gang, forever wondering what happened to her dear friend?

THE REVIEW

Even from the plot summary, it sounds like the movie that was advertised. I mean, isn’t it, in some way, a version of Taken? I mean even the tagline “who would you become to save your family?” I mean it’s…it’s Taken, you guys.

Except it’s not. Now don’t get me wrong, I actually liked Taken when I saw it, but this is not that movie. The way it’s billed, you think Gloria will develop some kind of relationship with Lino and be his gang queen or something, but really she’s doing it to save her friend so it’s all a lie. And like…that is not what happens. You can tell it’s what Lino wants to happen (except for the it being all a lie part)-he’s obsessed with Gloria pretty much from the moment he sees her. He is beyond happy to control her and make her special, groom her into being his “queen.”

But Gloria? She is having NONE of that.

Even when it seems hopeless, and it seems hopeless a LOT, Gloria never loses sight of her goal: Suzu. Saving Suzu is all she wants. She is not in it for any kind of sick relationship with Lino or DEA guy (SPOILER granted, DEA guy doesn’t really last long enough to even make it a possibility but also he kinda betrayed Gloria so we don’t care for him that much tbh).

Now, are there action-packed scenes as advertised? Yes, of course. But you know how in movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Liam Neeson or I guess Dwayne Johnson is doing stuff like that now whatever ANYWAY, generally in movies like that, the action scenes are “fun?” They’re always played to show you how impossibly immortal our main guy is, or how weird and ridiculous some of the stunts can get. They’re played to bring out your inner animal to cheer for all the destruction or something I guess, I’ve never enjoyed stuff like that so I can’t speak for why they’re the way they are. The action scenes in this movie are never enjoyable, they’re never there to show off stunts and grunts and whatever else you look for. These scenes are appropriately horrific. The shootout in the club at the beginning is terrifying and stressful, the stand-off in the lot between the gang and the DEA is tense and difficult, and the final assault on the party, despite it being the most played up in the trailer, is scary. It just is.

And honestly? It’s one of the things I appreciate the most about the movie. It felt real, not just played up for entertainment.

I could go on about that for a while, but there are other reasons this movie isn’t the movie that was advertised. I’ll go into those more down below.

So it’s not the movie that was advertised-but is it good?

Honestly? It’s pretty okay.

Like The Kid Who Would Be King, I don’t think this is a movie that’ll win any awards. It’s a little messy, especially in the beginning, and the ending kinda comes out of nowhere. Plus, even though it knows what movie it wants to be, it was not advertised as such, so people don’t really know what to do with it. Plus apparently it’s very loosely based off of a 2011 Mexican film of the same name, so some people have an issue with that.

Look, despite the messiness, I still think there are interesting and good things in this film-plus, Gina Rodriguez is a goddess.

I can’t fully detail my opinion here, so let’s just dive in deeper and discuss.

Spoilers ahead!!

THE MUSIC

I really liked the music! I don’t think there was any one musical moment that really stood out to me, although the club shootout was eerie because the club music kept playing over the carnage which was just…very unsettling. Effective, but also just kind of…blech.

Actually, having looked up the soundtrack on Spotify, I can say that the sweet guitar theme in the song called “Gloria & Suzu” is adorable and sweet, and then “Gloria Drives” is a direct contradiction and is super suspenseful and just ACK.

Also, we have to talk about the end credits song “Call the Shots” by Leslie Grace because DAMN. The lyrics are exactly why I like what I do like about this movie, and we’ll get into why in a later section. But seriously, this song is good. Add it to your “empowerment” playlist.

THE CHARACTERS

Probably appropriately, we don’t have a lot of characters to discuss because a lot of them don’t get fully developed (I mean many of them do die so).

We have to start with our leading lady, light of my soul, Gloria Fuentes. I’m probably biased because I would die for Gina Rodriguez, but Gloria is a wonderful lead to follow through the movie. Again, her goal the entire time is just to find and save her best friend, and it’s just so pure and good you want her to succeed. Gloria is not perfect of course. She breaks down a lot on various jobs from Lino, I mean girl is scared, all right, and in order to save herself she accidentally helps her new comrade Isabel get…killed. You could argue that it is that scene, however, that helps to solidify her actions in the final act. Anyway, point is, Gloria is a good character to follow, and she is smart, capable, and has a good arc-we’re happy that she wins in the end because she deserves it. She is constantly underestimated by the men in the film, and she lets them, partly because she is used to it, but also because it leads to their downfall in many cases and her victory. Fools.

Suzu is, unfortunately, absent from much of the film, but she is an absolute ray of sunshine when she is onscreen. This is good because we have to want her to be rescued. In the little bit we do see of her, she clearly cares for Gloria a lot, and she just genuinely wants to win Miss Baja California. She is too pure and good and I’m so happy she’s okay in the end. I mean, unfortunately, she’s changed because of what happened to her, but she does get rescued.

Lino Esparza is a fascinating villain, and the more I think about it, the more I’m glad they depicted him the way they did. The movie does a fantastic job of painting him as a monster and a human. He does terrible, terrible things. He kills without a second thought. He has no problem ordering Gloria to strip for him, to lie down next to him, to untie his boots for him. He is absolutely drunk on the power he owns because he believes he deserves it. But…he’s dang attractive! And he at least seems to care for Gloria, sort of, but more importantly, look! He has a sweet family who cooks delicious food and there are children and he’s great with them and one day he just wants to buy that land so they just own it and awwww!! Lino is humanized to some degree for both the audience and Gloria, but never so much that we forget how awful he is. He’s well-rounded, and that’s important!

There are other characters, like I mentioned, but they’re not developed or even really important in the way that those three are. Lino has a henchman who never trusts Gloria and treats Isabel like a sex slave. DEA guy Brian has no soul (he tells Gloria there will be a SWAT guy available to get her out of the standoff, but when Gloria says there isn’t anyone there, he just says “k you’re on your own bye” LIKE. EXCUSE YOU). Suzu has a little brother who is Gloria’s godson and he is precious and also comes out unharmed! Isabel is precious, if I could have made any changes, it would have been to have both her AND Gloria take Lino’s crew down, but I get why her death happened.

Basically, the characters that were developed are well-developed, and that’s important. There aren’t a lot of them, but there don’t really need to be. We don’t need to know Henchman #1’s entire backstory to dislike him for the way he behaves towards Isabel. DEA guy Brian had plenty of character development in the betrayal scene and that was all I needed to know about him honestly.

THE TWIST

I guess the first twist is in the middle when Gloria saves Lino in the lot standoff, but that was shown in the trailer so doesn’t count. The big twist comes at the very end.

Throughout the film, Gloria has been asking Lino to help her find Suzu because he promised. He dances around the topic a lot, but that’s just kind of how he is so it’s not really suspicious…until it is.

The ultimate plan is for Gloria to infiltrate the Miss Baja California pageant and win so that she can be invited to the Chief of Police’s room (yeah that rumor where he sleeps with the winner? HAHA NOT A RUMOR). Once there, Esparza’s men will attack and take him down so that she can find Suzu.

At the party, Gloria does find Suzu! But when she pulls Suzu aside to talk, she discovers something awful-Suzu was sold into a sex-trafficking ring run by none other than Lino Esparza himself. She has a tattoo on her hand that matches the one on Lino’s back-a tattoo logo.

So the whole time Lino was pretending to be looking for Suzu, he knew exactly where she was.

Filled with fury at this revelation but being taken to the Chief of Police’s room now, she decides to ruin the plan. She writes on a card to show to the Chief of Police that Lino Esparza is coming to kill him. This of course leads to a gigantic shootout that Gloria walks through (remember that footage from the trailer with her in the red dress? Mmm. Yep.).

There, she finds both Suzu…and Lino. Lino, still playing innocent, tells Gloria “see! I told you we’d find her!” But Gloria is having none of it. She asks Suzu to show Lino her hand with the tattoo. So Lino knows now, but even though Gloria’s pointing a gun at him, he doesn’t think she’ll shoot (this mirrors an earlier scene where he was teaching her to shoot and she had the gun pointed at him for a time). Unlike earlier though, she does take the shot. This ties in to the bigger theme of the film:

THE THEME

Underestimating women, but especially Gloria, is what I would argue to be the main theme of the film.

Throughout the entire film, Gloria is underestimated by every man she comes in contact with. Her supervisor? She “doesn’t get paid to think.” DEA guy Brian? Cool if she can bring them Lino, but if not, she’ll be another casualty in the standoff and not his problem. Henchman #1? He just doesn’t want her to distract Lino, but of course she can’t be the mole. Also, she’s a terrible cook who sets the kitchen on fire (newsflash: she did it on purpose as part of her plan and also you’re an idiot). And most of all: Lino Esparza. He thinks Gloria is fascinating and he likes her because she’s American, like he was. He senses some fight in her, but not enough to do anything about it. He degrades her by touching her, ordering her around, dressing her up, by owning her. He teaches her to shoot because he wants her to be able to defend herself on their next job because obviously she’s totally going to stay with him, but he does not think she will shoot him even when she’s pointing a gun at him.

Women are objects for men throughout the film. It’s ironic that part of the last job takes place at a beauty pageant, something famously ridiculed for the way it showcases women. Suzu is sold as a sex slave, and she’s entering this pageant knowing, probably, that if she wins she may have no choice but to sleep with the Chief of Police. Isabel is absolutely a sex slave for Henchman #1, and both she and Gloria are immediately delegated to cooking for the men at their hideout. Every party shown in the movie has obvious shots of women in tight dresses leading men out of room post-sex, shots of strippers, shots of girls whose only job is to look pretty for the men that own them in this world.

This movie does not end with Gloria taking a gun and shooting all of Esparza’s men in revenge, as well as every other horny guy there. She uses the gun on the Chief of Police, someone who canonically has taken advantage of and slept with who knows how many desperate girls simply because he can, someone who has groped not only Gloria but multiple girls throughout the film. She uses the gun on Lino Esparza, the man in charge of the sex trafficking ring that took her best friend, the man who tried to groom, abuse, and use her, the man who killed Isabel without a second thought because sometimes “sacrifices need to be made.”

And that’s it.

Once Lino is dead, Gloria grabs Suzu and they immediately surrender to the police.

I think that’s why many people (specifically all the old white guy reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes #I’MJUSTSAYING) don’t like this film. It was advertised as that big macho man movie except ohhhhh DUDE it has Gina Rodriguez in a tight red dress DUUUUUUUUDE!!!

Gloria is never objectified for the audience’s sake. She is objectified by the men in the film because that is the point-these men underestimate her and think they can own her, and they cannot.

Why?

Because of female friendship. Gloria’s quest to find Suzu is what drives her, and she never, ever wavers. When she shoots the Chief of Police, she is also shooting the man who would have forced Suzu to sleep with him if she’d won the pageant. When she shoots Lino, she is also shooting the man who sold her friend like a collectible trinket.

Despite being advertised as a big, violent movie with GUNS!, guns are never glorified in the way it was maybe advertised. Lino loves his weapons of course, but again, Gloria only uses it to bring two of her and Suzu’s and many, many women’s abusers down. Then, she drops it. She doesn’t need it anymore. In an age where there are violent shootings every day in the US, I admire this movie for not painting it as some kind of saving grace for Gloria-it was a tool to save her and her friend, and then, she was done.

THE RELATIONSHIP

I have to talk a little about the Lino/Gloria relationship because I really appreciate the way it was handled.

It would have been incredibly easy to have some sort of “romantic” element added to it-Lino clearly at least lusts for her, and Gloria starts to see some sort of human side to him after he takes her to see his family.

However, it never went that direction, and I am so thankful for that.

Every scene with Lino and Gloria is kind of disgusting to some degree, which is exactly how it should be. He’s constantly staring at her, touching her, flat-out ordering her to strip, or messing with her hair. It’s never loving, it’s always possessive. And Gloria never reacts like maybe she wants it, ever-she’s always stone-faced and clearly trying not to like, scream. Maybe that’s just what I wanted to do.

Even when Gloria may start seeing some sort of good in him, this is immediately shattered by how easy it is for him to murder Isabel. This is a double-edged sword, because it was Gloria’s action of putting the tracking chip in Isabel’s phone (though granted, she did not know it was Isabel’s phone when she did it, she was on a time-limit) that led to her being labeled a traitor. But that’s all Lino needs to execute her, despite Gloria’s screams of protest. She begs to just be able to talk to him, maybe she can make him see sense, but Lino doesn’t let her, he wants her to be taken away where she can’t interfere.

This action solidifies Gloria’s feelings toward him. It SUCKS that Isabel dies, but in a way it’s necessary for Gloria to fully realize Lino as a monster. You could argue that the discovery of the link between Suzu and Lino also does this, but I think you have to build it gradually. Gloria’s furious at Lino, but she won’t do anything to him because her priority is Suzu. Once Suzu is found oh and also he’s the one in charge of that trafficking ring? Then all bets are off.

Basically, they could have added this Stockholm syndrome plotline to this, and I’m so glad they didn’t.

THE RE-IMAGINING

The poster above is one for the 2011 movie I mentioned earlier. It also got mixed reviews, but generally people seemed to like it, especially those people angry about this new movie.

I think because they share a title and a very, very basic plot connection, it’s easy to claim this 2019 movie is a remake, in which case it would be a very bad one. The main character is completely different and the Miss Baja California plotline is played way, WAY down.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s fair to call this film a remake-I would say it’s more of a re-imagining. Even the opening credits claim it’s inspired by the 2011 film, not based on.

Now, I haven’t seen the 2011 film, but from what I gather and see, the bullet imagery is played up a lot more in that film than this one. The point of that film is the infiltration of the beauty pageant-the point of this film is Gloria as a character and her friendship with Suzu. The pageant is never the point, merely a side thing.

Anyway, you’re welcome to do what you want of course, I just generally don’t think it’s fair to compare these two films since honestly, they seem to be very different. Should the 2019 film have been named something different, then? I mean yeah, maybe. But like The Power of Friendship sounds like a My Little Pony movie, so…

“OOF” MOMENT

Again, every scene where Lino touched Gloria just was GROSS and EW but we gotta give this one to the ending where Gloria is suddenly recruited by the CIA?????

Um…I mean cool she deserves it but also WHAT.

FAVORITE MOMENT

When Gloria found Suzu and gave her the friendship bracelet she’d been holding on to to show her that she’d been looking for her this whole time I JUST THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH I SUPPORT THEM.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO THIS MOVIE?

So listen-it’s honestly tough for me to recommend this movie. I saw a review that called it “genre-defying” and I agree with that. It’s hard to place this movie because it’s so…not what people thought. And that’s not a bad thing, at least for me. I did like it, and I loved the direction it took, but the violence is tough to watch. Again, I feel like it’s meant to be because it’s not directed as entertaining action scenes, which is good. It’s appropriately horrific, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.

Still, the violence is not the entire movie. Gina Rodriguez absolutely steals the show and does amazing, and it’s so, so satisfying when she finds Suzu and wins. If you like typical action thrillers, you may not like this film. But if you like character-driven, tense films where the bad guys DEFINITELY LOSE and the good girls are incredible AND WIN, then I think you might like this one. Above all else, I think it does have a good story with great characters, and again, a very satisfying ending (prior to the CIA recruitment because that was just waaaaaay out of left field).

As a whole, I give this film…

3/5 FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS!!!!

Because we all know it, that friendship bracelet was a much bigger symbol to the film than a bullet, despite both film title and advertising.

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

You would think that by now I’ve seen the Pet Sematary trailer enough to know and prepare for that stupid truck jumpscare in the beginning. I’m not, though. Lots of repeat trailers for this movie, but our new contenders are: Captain Marvel, which I will absolutely be seeing. I mean, Marvel finally giving a female superhero their own movie???? I’M THERE. Plus I would die for Brie Larson, much like I would die for Gina Rodriguez. Cold Pursuit looks…meh. It was so hard to tell what the movie was even about from the trailer, it was just like “LOOK! LIAM NEESON! Also explosions! Cars in trees! Loud noises! Excitement! LIAM NEESON AGAIN!” so um…right now it’s a no from me, unless there’s some incredible plot or I hear good things. But. Meh. And then there was Brightburn, which when I was taking notes in my phone I actually wrote “Brightburn what the GUCK” and I didn’t correct it because that feels a lot more accurate to how I feel about it. I mean, we’ve all been spammed with trailers for The Prodigy, and now this looks like almost the same film except the kid is like an evil..alien? I guess? That stupid jumpscare at the end though. Nope.

And that does it for this review!

Is Miss Bala a great movie? Not really. But I can appreciate and like things about it, and if you think you can too, I recommend taking yourself to the movies to see Miss Bala.

Or if you just wanna see Gina Rodriguez walk around in that dress with explosions in the background because honestly, price of admission, right there.