Except for its disappointingly tapered ending, Miss Bala... is an impressive, anxiety-ridden crime drama that can join the ranks of some of the best in its genre, from two of Mexico's best talents.

| Original Score: + | Sep 8, 2017

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 3, 2012

Naranjo is unflinching in his determination not to serve up mindless entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2012

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 27, 2012

Maybe the film doesn't add up to quite as much as its talented director, Gerardo Naranjo, seems to have hoped, but it is tense and propulsive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2012

Miss Bala is full of virtuoso single-take tracking shots and over-the-shoulder perspectives that effectively convey a sense of menace and momentum.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2012

Naranjo offers a grim subject with neither flash nor sentiment. It is a sober film done with style.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2012

This strange and eerie noir is more a collection of knockout scenes than a fully realized story.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 20, 2012

There is a larger message to be found here, but it never derails the taut vintage thriller that's been constructed.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 19, 2012

It's an adventure story that could be called a contemporary picaresque if it weren't so deadly serious, and might be called fantastical if it weren't loosely based on a true story of a former Miss Hispanic America.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 19, 2012

"Miss Bala" is a portrait of a young woman who is at once terribly vulnerable and improbably brave. It's equally a vision of a vulnerable society on the road to anarchy.

| Jan 19, 2012

An urgent dispatch from the sidelines of the drug war that consumes our southern neighbor.

| Jan 19, 2012

[A] well-shot, bluntly propulsive thriller...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2012

In the vision of this ruthless and abundantly talented young director, life in Tijuana isn't merely as bad as you think. It's worse.

Full Review | Jan 19, 2012

Mexico's 2012 submission for Best Foreign Language Film - rightfully so.

| Original Score: A | Jan 18, 2012

Gerardo Naranjo may have made the least-glamorous movie ever about a pageant queen with "Miss Bala."

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 18, 2012

Miss Bala is a work of impressionistic reportage, built out of artfully crammed widescreen compositions and bravura long tracking shots.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2012

There's a wild, Miami Blues-like dreaminess to the movie that's addictive.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 17, 2012

Miss Bala is a terrifying tale of a beauty contest that ends in horror... The film is a harrowing experience. It cuts deep.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 13, 2012

With the blistering firecracker that is Miss Bala, next-gen Mexican director and AFI grad Gerardo Naranjo delivers on the promise of such well-respected early pics as Drama/Mex and I'm Gonna Explode.

| Jan 9, 2012