Catherine Hardwicke is one of the more prolific female directors working today. Unfortunately, directors who happen to be women are often held to a much higher standard than their male peers, and many need to have a hit to ensure that they’ll ever work again. Hardwicke has had to do this more than once; the success of her first film, the game-changing Thirteen, “allowed” her to direct Twilight, the global hit that has subsequently given her a modicum of film freedom. Her track record since has been up and down, but her work is always interesting. Which leads us to Miss Bala, Hardwicke’s update of the 2011 Mexican film of the same name.
Hardwicke’s Miss Bala lacks the grit and flavor of the original, and as a result the film, while well-performed and visually solid, ends up being a little generic. This is a shame, because the core storyline, which adheres pretty closely to the original, is a lot of fun. It follows beautician Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) as she heads to Tijuana to help her friend Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) get ready for the Miss Baja California beauty pageant. Gloria and Suzu end up in the middle of a shootout at a night club, and Gloria, having seen too much, ends up caught in the middle of a war between a drug cartel and the D.E.A.
With a set-up like this, it’s hard not to hope for a steely thriller filled with duplicity and changing allegiances, like a femme-forward “Breaking Bad” or Sicario with beauty queens. Instead, writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer strips away the nuances of the original, leaving Rodriguez with little to do other than look stressed out. Hardwicke could have compensated by adding her own stylistic spin to the material, but she holds back.
Much of the press around Miss Bala has spoken about Rodriguez transformed into an action star for the role. However, Rodriguez played one of the most complicated and evolved action characters in recent times in last year’s underseen Annihilation, which makes that proclamation ring false. And while she does have some guns-blazing moments, the stakes never feel that high. Gloria is fighting to survive, of course, but we aren’t given a bigger picture, which is strange considering what a volatile topic the Mexico-U.S. border is at the moment.
There are glimpses of Hardwicke’s desire to reframe the original film’s conflict through the female gaze, but these attempts fall flat because of the clichéd nature of the characters within that gaze. Many of the Mexican characters are sex traffickers, drug dealers, murderers or all three and little thought is given to the desperation of these people. Instead they are formulaic villains and their portrayal is at times offensively stereotypical. Only Gloria seems allowed to be innocent here. And while the original film’s Gloria was innocent, the unique spin was that her innocence didn’t matter. Here, it does, and the results are predictable.
Though Miss Bala is mostly noteworthy because of the opportunities it misses, there are some positives. Hardwicke obviously knows how to make a movie, and the action is exhilarating. The cinematography (by Patrick Murguia) is speedy, assured and particularly effective in gunfight scenes, which makes sense given that “bala” is the Spanish word for “bullet.” And, appropriately, the film’s best asset is Miss Bala herself, Rodriguez, who carries the film confidently even when the script lets her down.
Miss Bala is a lesser and unnecessary remake, one that peddles in dangerous stereotypes by jettisoning the original’s subtext. However, director Catherine Hardwicke and star Gina Rodriguez are given opportunities to showcase their considerable talents, and the film’s action is pretty exciting. It could have, and was once, so much more though.
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