Cartel drama ‘Miss Bala’ nabbed at the border of credibility | Movie review

Miss Bala is loosely based on the 2011 Mexican movie of the same name, itself an embellished true story of a beauty pageant winner kidnapped by a drug cartel.

Gerardo Naranjo’s original was a gritty marvel presented from the point of view of the confused and terrified abductee, snatched from her pampered perch and drawn into a world of violence, corruption, and discounted human life she did not understand and was in no position to control.

Bewildered, abused, and ultimately abandoned, she represented all bystanders caught in up the collateral damage of drug wars, and could be read as a symbol for Mexico itself (the country submitted Miss Bala as its entry in the foreign-language category of the Oscars),

The remake, directed by Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke, makes substantial changes — taking the bare bones of the story and turning into a sort action-fable about female empowerment, starring Jane the Virgin headliner Gina Rodriguez.

She plays Gloria, a Los Angeles makeup artist who travels south to Tijuana to help her cousin Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) prepare for a beauty pageant. On the eve of the affair, they go to a nightclub where drug cartel leader Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova) and his band attempt to assassinate an adversary, and Suzu is kidnapped.

It is a strange scene, and shows the difficulty of what Hardwicke is trying to do — make an accessible PG-13 girl-power fist-pumper in the context of a movie about cartel violence. Bullets (the Spanish word is “balas”) fly, bodies pile up, but the scene is set to throbbing dance music, and the stylized shots and flashy colors had me looking around for Crockett and Tubbs.

The plot is also straight from Miami Vice — trying to get her friend back, Gloria finds herself co-opted as a sort of double agent, caught up in conspiracies involving dealers (a small role for Anthony Mackie), corrupt Mexican officials, DEA agents and other interests.

Gloria gradually becomes more resourceful, sly, and ferocious, which is the movie’s aim, but her increasingly decisive role in the complexities of cross-border dealing and interdiction is borderline comical — one wonders how the cartel was able to move drugs, weapons, explosives, and money before Gloria crossed the border with her makeup kit.

Rodriguez, though, is certainly game, and though her character is defined by her smarts and willpower, she also gets to stride glamorously through the concluding gunfight in a stunning red dress, holding an AR-15, ready to go to war with the patriarchy in all its forms.

The movie is itself glamorous — Hardwicke filmed Miss Bala in Tijuana, seeking out swanky modern architecture and posh locations designed to present the border city in a new and more flattering light. Nightclub massacres notwithstanding.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. With Gina Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Cristina Rodlo, and Ismael Cruz Cordova. Distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Parents' guide: PG-13 (violence)

Running time: 1 hour, 43 mins.

Playing at: Area theaters