The concept of “Miss Bala” is horrifyingly compelling: beauty queen (hence the ironic title, translated into English as “Miss Bullet”) turned drug mule. Everything about that just sounds awesome, like Quentin Tarantino remaking “Maria Full of Grace” – and I didn’t really even like that movie.
Yet while the violence and carnage of “Miss Bala” further convinces me that the Mexican drug trafficking trade is a brutally dangerous one, it felt a little like preaching to the converted. At least, it felt that way for me being from Texas where stories of bloodshed along the border make the local news more often. Perhaps it will strike more of a cord with different audiences less familiar with the drug trade. But for me, I just found “Miss Bala” a boring albeit bloody slog through a thinly-plotted script. It somehow manages to feel interminably long despite many sequences of extreme violence.
The performance of Stephanie Sigman as Laura, the movie’s protagonist, is weak at best. To carry the movie and really drive home the horror, she needed to be a lot stronger and more emotionally forceful. I just never really connected to the character to the point where I cared about her journey at all. By the end, I didn’t feel strongly one way or another about her survival. I just wanted “Miss Bala” to end. C- / 
Marshall and the Movies 
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