AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Sindre Kaspersen Mexican screenwriter, producer and director Gerardo Naranjo's fourth feature film which he co-wrote with screenwriter Mauricio Katz, is inspired by real events in the life of a Mexican model and beauty pageant winner named Láura Zúñiga. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 64th Cannes International Film Festival in 2011, was shot on locations in Mexico and is a Mexican production which was produced by producer Pablo Cruz. It tells the story about a 23-year-old woman named Laura Guerrero who lives with her father and younger brother Artoruro in the state of Tijuana, Bala California in Mexico. Laura enters a beauty contest called Miss Baja California with her friend Jessica at a place called Millennium, but whilst they are getting ready to go home a group of organized criminals surrounds the building.Distinctly and brilliantly directed by Mexican filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated almost entirely from the main character's point of view, draws an instantly moving portrayal of a Mexican woman who unwillingly gets pulled into a drug trafficking war. While notable for its naturalistic milieu depictions, fine art direction by art director Ivonne Fuentes, sterling cinematography by cinematographer Matyas Erdely and use of sound, this character-driven and narrative-driven story depicts a somewhat sparse and engaging study of character.This at times riveting action-drama which is set in in the westernmost city of Mexico in the early 21st century during an ongoing drug war between rivalling drug cartels and Mexican government forces and where a woman who wishes to win a contest so that she can give her brother a good education is taken hostage, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, prominent style of filmmaking and the fine and understated acting performance by Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman. An eloquent, stylistic and dramatic thriller.

A. Pismo Clam This movie focuses on the life of a lovely, young woman from Tijuana, Mexico who has dreams of becoming a beauty contest queen in Baja California...but things go terribly wrong.It is a haunting dramatic and very disturbing movie; a tragic story that does not have to be fiction! You can see, as the story unfolds, just how deplorable and costly, not only in money, the Colombian drug pipeline into the United States and the rest of the world in general is, in reality.If even a small portion of this movie is factual, we citizens of the United States, in particular, are in a very grave position...all of us. In jeopardy of losing everything that had been built in our previous 237 years...When future historians mark our passage through this epoch, they may very well become bewildered by our "handling" of the drug war problem and remark, "Why? Why?"Seldom am I driven to make such a dramatic statement. See the movie, if you can find it on "pay" t.v. and judge for yourself.As the movie credits roll at the end, the following statement appears in the lower margin..."THE Mexican DRUG WAR HAS CAUSED THE DEATHS OF OVER 36,000 PEOPLE BETWEEN 2006 AND 2011. IN Mexico ALONE, DRUG TRAFFICKING GENERATES $25 BILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY."

Robert J. Maxwell It reminds me a little of "Traffic," also about drugs and smuggling between Mexico and the US, only here the point of view is limited to that of Stephanie Sigman, as Laura Guerrero, who by happenstance wins the crown of Miss Baja, even while she has been kidnapped and used by a drug gang, La Estrella. (I wonder if there was any irony intended.) I understand this was "ripped from the headlines" or "based on a true story" but that rarely means much. Real life is confusing and full of adventitiousness. It's murky. Half the time we don't know what the hell is going on. Maybe that's why this film limits itself to Sigman's point of view. Several scenes are shot that way. The camera follows her around. She's in just about every scene. We get to know only what Stephanie Sigman's character knows. The audience is forced to identify with this innocent young woman, just as it was forced to identify with Janet Leigh in "Psycho." Briefly, Sigman tries to enter a beauty contest and attends a party in which a drug gang commits a kind of massacre. The gang captures her and thereafter she's their slave, forced to smuggle money into the US, subject to all sorts of sexual abuse, which is muted in the film. The gang know who she is, where she lives, and who is in her family. There's nothing much she can do. A gang leader drives her out into the desert, gives her some money, and tells her she can leave. "Just walk straight ahead and sooner or later you'll come to someplace. Just don't contact anyone you know, and don't ever go home." She doesn't leave. Would any of us? Sigman -- well, one can easily see how she might win a beauty contest. (They're as phony in Mexico as they are here, and they provide the only semi-comic moments in the film because they're such an easy target.) Sigman isn't a stunning beauty, but she's attractive enough and has a flawless figure. Catalina Sandina Moreno was attractive too, in the superior "Maria, Full of Grace."As the central figure, Sigman must carry the movie. Maybe she could have but the role is written with only one dimension possible. The young woman hardly has any lines because she's afraid to speak up. She's constantly baffled and terrified, and though it doesn't give the actress a chance to do much, it's understandable. She an unwilling witness to several shoot outs and a couple of really brutal murders. She walks through the movie with her mouth open and her head down. At that, it's an improvement over most of the commercial tripe being ground out in Hollywood.I've spent some time in Mexico, including Tijuana, some years ago but I don't think I'd do it again. The general impression I've gotten -- and not just from this movie -- is that the country and some of the border cities in the USA are beginning to resemble a Hobbesian world of all against all. Very little is what it seems to be. When Sigman is "captured" (after saving the life of a high-echelon anti-drug personage), the media trumpet the death of the gang members and the capture of Sigman, who is now considered a lawless bandit herself. But she's not sent to prison. After the police beat her, she's thrown out on the street.The heart sinks -- for her, for us, for a civilization whose center cannot hold.

gradyharp MISS BALA is a strong film from Mexico (apparently based on a true account of the unending drug war focused in Tijuana produced by actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna and James Russo who has a role in the film as a corrupt DEA agent) - a film that is unafraid to uncover the ruthless activities by the drug cartels, the Mexican police, and the US DEA agents in the endless battle against drug trafficking. It hits like a punch in the stomach and remains in the memory long after the credits have rolled.Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman) dreams of being a beauty queen in the Miss Baja California Beauty Pageant, a position that will raise her out of her meager existence as a dress maker in the outskirts of Tijuana where she lives with her little brother and father. She and her best friend Zuzu work their way into the line of women vying for the contest title. After winning entry into the pageant Laura reluctantly agrees to go to a sleazy nightclub with Zuzu. In the club's toilets she witnesses the covert entry of an organized drugs cartel led by Lino Valdez (Noe Hernandez). Lino is finds Laura to be attractive and smart, and allows her to escape. However, when Laura reports her missing friend Zuzu to a corrupt Mexican police officer, she finds herself delivered back into the hands of Lino, and entangled ever deeper in a vicious drugs war. She is used as a mule to transport drug money across the border, returning to full fledged gang war. Lino uses her physically and then keeps his promise to have her crowned Miss Baja California, but the title and the events that follow lead to horrors and alienation Laura never dreamed possible.Writers Mauricio Katz and writer/director Gerardo Naranjo push this expose of just how all consuming the drug traffic problem is at the border. It is terrifying and though Laura seems to be a helpless obeying victim throughout the tale, she represents just how futile it must be to attempt to stand against the atrocious crimes being committed. The power of the film is its willingness to show that both side of the war on drugs - gangs, police, DEA agents, and population - are at fault for allowing this outrage to continue. But business is business and the film hints at how hopeless the situation is. Stephanie Sigman emerges as an actress of importance and her part in this film will remain indelibly burned on the minds of the viewers. We should all see this film. Grady Harp