People are voting emotionally.

not horrible nor great

Fantastic!

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Get ready to review your ideas about good and bad guys. And nope, it's not about corrupted police vs. citizens fighting the good fight. Just forget about the thin line altogether.And this is what I enjoyed the most about this movie. The initial plot has been revisited more time than I care to remember, and probably you go to this movie expecting to know what you are getting into...but you don't. You will be better off being realistic about the character and its possibilities and then you will fully understand her actions and its consequences.Very realistic and very recommended action movie.

Mexican screenwriter, producer and director Gerardo Naranjo's fourth feature film which he co-wrote with screenwriter Mauricio Katz, is inspired by real events in the life of a Mexican model and beauty pageant winner named Láura Zúñiga. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 64th Cannes International Film Festival in 2011, was shot on locations in Mexico and is a Mexican production which was produced by producer Pablo Cruz. It tells the story about a 23-year-old woman named Laura Guerrero who lives with her father and younger brother Artoruro in the state of Tijuana, Bala California in Mexico. Laura enters a beauty contest called Miss Baja California with her friend Jessica at a place called Millennium, but whilst they are getting ready to go home a group of organized criminals surrounds the building.Distinctly and brilliantly directed by Mexican filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated almost entirely from the main character's point of view, draws an instantly moving portrayal of a Mexican woman who unwillingly gets pulled into a drug trafficking war. While notable for its naturalistic milieu depictions, fine art direction by art director Ivonne Fuentes, sterling cinematography by cinematographer Matyas Erdely and use of sound, this character-driven and narrative-driven story depicts a somewhat sparse and engaging study of character.This at times riveting action-drama which is set in in the westernmost city of Mexico in the early 21st century during an ongoing drug war between rivalling drug cartels and Mexican government forces and where a woman who wishes to win a contest so that she can give her brother a good education is taken hostage, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, prominent style of filmmaking and the fine and understated acting performance by Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman. An eloquent, stylistic and dramatic thriller.

This movie focuses on the life of a lovely, young woman from Tijuana, Mexico who has dreams of becoming a beauty contest queen in Baja California...but things go terribly wrong.It is a haunting dramatic and very disturbing movie; a tragic story that does not have to be fiction! You can see, as the story unfolds, just how deplorable and costly, not only in money, the Colombian drug pipeline into the United States and the rest of the world in general is, in reality.If even a small portion of this movie is factual, we citizens of the United States, in particular, are in a very grave position...all of us. In jeopardy of losing everything that had been built in our previous 237 years...When future historians mark our passage through this epoch, they may very well become bewildered by our "handling" of the drug war problem and remark, "Why? Why?"Seldom am I driven to make such a dramatic statement. See the movie, if you can find it on "pay" t.v. and judge for yourself.As the movie credits roll at the end, the following statement appears in the lower margin..."THE Mexican DRUG WAR HAS CAUSED THE DEATHS OF OVER 36,000 PEOPLE BETWEEN 2006 AND 2011. IN Mexico ALONE, DRUG TRAFFICKING GENERATES $25 BILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY."

I like foreign language films and this is right up there as one which can be enjoyed from beginning to end. It is a Mexican film in Spanish language with perfect subtitles in English on DVD.The story is of course about a young girl called Laura who has a dream of becoming a Beauty queen while also being a story about how she gets caught up and used in a drugs war.There is no doubt that Laura is portrayed as a very stubborn character and is presented with opportunities to escape from her dangerous situations but she is possessed of fear what might happen to her Father and Brother.She has seen that the Mexican police could not be trusted, so who could she trust? The film also illustrates how a drug cartel might also influence the outcome of a Beauty pageant to instill fear and control over one of its participants.Yes it is a little depressing but a riveting drama thriller to watch. Considering the subject matter, there is nothing graphically sexual and no outlandish bad language, there are a couple of sex scenes but the filming generally is carefully considered and respectable.