A beautiful woman from Tijuana dreams of becoming Miss Baja, but some bad luck turns her into a victim of the drug cartels, where she's forced into aiding and abetting criminals. Because she's smart, and she tries to to the right thing at every turn, we empathize with her plight -- even though we know she's doomed. A terrifying but highly dramatic descent into the realities of everyday life in Mexico, Miss Bala isn't just a well-made thriller, it's an urgent call for help.

(In Spanish with English subtitles)

Starring: Stephanie Sigman, Noe Hernandez, Irene Azuela

Rating: Four stars out of five

Although Miss Bala did not make the final ballot for the 84th Academy Awards, it deserved to be in the running -- and, once you see it, you may wonder if the film's exclusion is the result of some shady conspiracy.

Yes, it sounds entirely paranoid and just a little psychotic, but that's exactly why this film about modern Mexico is so powerful: It lets you see deep into the shadows of our current reality, where nothing can be taken at face value.

Director Gerardo Naranjo executes a beautiful metaphor by starting with the very concept of "face value" -- and a beauty pageant.

Our de facto heroine, a gorgeous but poor woman named Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman), wants to compete for Miss Baja in the hopes of making a new start. Instead, she ends up witnessing a gangland shooting, and is taken hostage by the bad guys, who insist she become a getaway driver.

Things start to cascade downward from there, as Laura is forced into aiding and abetting the crime lord who's got an axe to grind with the American drug-enforcement agents.

As a complete innocent who tries to do the right thing, and the smart thing, at every turn, we can't help but sympathize with Laura's plight, but it soon becomes obvious there is no escape route when everything around you is corrupt.

Even "face value" is orchestrated. In one of the sicker narrative turns, Laura is accepted into the Miss Baja pageant as a result of strong-arm tactics from her new master, the creepy gang lord (Noe Hernandez).

Apparently inspired by a real-life incident, Laura wins the pageant, because everyone in this movie is on the take.

For the average North American moviegoer, the complexities of corruption will cause some emotional anxiety, because we're trained to seek the battle between good and evil, between the knights in shining armour and the dastardly foes.

Here, there is no knight in shining armour. Everyone is suspect, and everyone is a predator.

It's exhausting to feel so powerless, but that's precisely why Naranjo's film is such an emotional success: He lets us feel what it might be like to be a poor, but highly attractive, woman living in Tijuana. Sooner or later, no matter what you do, you will be pawned, pawed, preyed upon and used to fulfil the darkest of masculine motives.

In no small way, Naranjo outlines the fate of so many women all over the world, as they are used and abused to satisfy a need for male power and potency.

In one of the film's more nauseating, but enlightening, sequences, Laura is taken to the beach and told to walk until she hits something.

It's absolute darkness, and she soon realizes she'll either be shot, or die in the desert, come sunrise. Her path to apparent freedom is a dead end, so she marches back to the drug lord's truck, and submits to sex with the man who's bleeding profusely from his groin.

The whole encounter is so pathetic and painful -- for both parties -- you have to wonder why it's there, but it had to be: It's the absolute negation of romance, masculine heroism and glamour.

It's repulsive and just plain sad.

But it gets even worse, as Laura finds herself among the power hitters of Mexican society, only to discover the entire government and army are just as dirty as the drug lord -- who may, in fact, be playing a dual role.

The film is courageous enough to keep things open-ended about complicity, but the filmmaker's message is entirely conclusive: Mexico is in the hands of the drug cartels, and the corruption goes all the way to the very top.

By giving us a front-row seat to what it's like on the ground level, Naranjo and the hypnotic Sigman pull us into the nauseating vortex by the gut, and never let go. A relentlessly terrifying ride that offers no escape, and no solutions, Miss Bala (a pun, meaning Miss Bullet) feels like an act of desperation. The fact that it's as cinematic, and dramatically cohesive as it is, is a testament to the craftsmanship and creativity of everyone involved in this standout slice of life.

© Copyright (c) dose.ca