FILM

Mexico 2011 113 mins Subtitles Dir: Gerardo Naranjo Starring: Stephanie Sigman, James Russo, Noe Hernandez

In the ever-expanding cinema of attractive young Latino women sucked into the international drugs trade, this new film from Gerardo Naranjo, Mexican director of 'I'm Gonna Explode', stands tall alongside 'Maria Full of Grace'.

Dirt-poor 23-year-old Laura (Sigman) lives with her dad and little brother in the border town of Tijuana, Baja California. With her pal Suzu, she decides to enter the local Miss Baja beauty contest (the title's no misprint but a play on words that translates as 'Miss Bullet', in case you're wondering).

But when she follows Suzu to what appears to be Mexico's grimmest nightclub, which has all the appeal of a works canteen crossed with a multi-storey car park, a bunch of heavily armed gangsters burst in and open fire. Miraculously, Laura survives and approaches a traffic cop in the hope that he'll help her find out what happened to Suzu. Surprise! He's as bent as virtually everyone else in Mexico as a result of the corrupting influence of the drugs trade, and promptly delivers her into the gnarly hands of limping, leering Mr Big, Lino (Hernandez), who's engaged in a violent war with the DEA.

Inspired by a real story and casting a genuine former model in the lead role, this marks a major step forward for Naranjo, who stages some thrilling set-pieces - including a street shoot-out that's textbook Michael Mann - without losing sight of the story's human and political dimensions. Noe Hernandez's Lino manages to be ruthless and menacing without resorting to Mexploitation scenery-chewing, while the debuting Stephanie Sigman is remarkably convincing as the trapped, exploited and helpless Laura, who is clearly intended as a proxy for ordinary Mexican people caught in the crossfire of increasingly violent drug gang warfare. (Robin Askew)

website www.missbala.com/

Opens: October 28

Copyright Robin Askew 2011