Rent Miss Bala (2011)

Drawn-out drugster drama - Miss Bala review by Alphaville

Worthy, documentary-style Mexican drug movie, with long-held shots and little score to heighten the drama. It’s all filmed from the POV of our heroine, who gets drawn in to drug smuggling. She’s the only real character in the film, which is a real problem as she’s not very interesting and is mostly just a passive pawn in proceedings. This makes it difficult to care about or even follow most of what’s going on around her.

There’s some nice camerawork here and there among the odd shoot-out, but there’s never any emotional involvement in what’s going on. It’s like watching the news. The film’s worthiness has even enabled it to garner some good reviews. The wildly OTT DVD blurb spouts nonsense about it being “explosive”, “mesmerising” and “leaving you gasping for air”. You’re more likely to be “gasping for the FF button”.