Miss Bala(2019)

Plot Summary

• Gloria Fuentes (Gina Rodriguez) is a Latin-American makeup artist from Los Angeles who visits her best friend Suzu (Christina Rodlo) in Tijuana, Mexico. Her friend is entering the Miss Tijuana pageant. The two go to register, and the women there comments that she wouldn't think Gloria would enter. Suzu tries to tell her off, but Gloria ignores the comment. Later, the pair decides to go out to a night club. There, they spot the Chief of Police, who Suzu wants to impress to help her chances in the competition. When Gloria goes to the bathroom, gunmen who are part of a crime organization Las Estrellas, break into the bathroom through the vents. They pull Gloria out of her stall but ultimately give her time to escape while they gun down the place. She escapes, hitting her head, and tries to get hold of her friend, who she lost in the crossfire. She can't and the next morning asks a police officer to take her to the station so that she can find her friend.The police officer tells her he's "getting lunch" and gives her up to Las Estrellas. They take her to their headquarters where the boss Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova) agrees to help her find Suzu if she agrees to work for them. She reluctantly agrees and is told to get into a car and park it on a corner. She does, and when she leaves the car and joins the men at the top of the hill, they blow up the building, revealed to be a DEA Safehouse containing three agents. Lino then sends Gloria to the Miss Tijuana pageant where she attempts an escape through the bathroom. She sees a white man and asks if he's American and could help her. He turns out to be a DEA agent and threatens her with years in prison if she doesn't help the DEA get to Las Estrellas. She begs to be let go, but they make her use a tracking chip in her phone and send her back.She goes back to Las Estrellas and is sent to San Diego with money and drugs attached to her car. The DEA is still tracking her. She arrives at the Border and is very scared that she will be discovered. She gets through without a problem and goes to the location in the GPS in San Diego, where she meets Jimmy (Anthony Mackie). He tells her to tell Lino that the DEA has a mole in his operation. Gloria leaves with another car full of weapons and gets through the border without issue. She gets in contact with the DEA, who she tells where she was told to come back to. A parking lot by a bull ring. They tell her there are two yellow doors she will be able to escape to once they can get to Lino. She gets to the bull ring, and the men in Las Estrellas get their weapons. However, the police show up with the DEA. Gloria makes a run for it, but when she realizes that there is no help beyond the yellow doors and that she has been played, is visibly upset. When Lino runs to get her and is shot in the leg, she realizes she has two choices. To run and be hunted or to help him and find her friend. She helps him, and he deems her trustworthy. The DEA agents are killed.They head to another safe house where Gloria meets Isabel (Aislinn Derbez). She was threatened into joining Las Estrellas and bears an e* tattoo, meaning she belongs to them. When Gloria hears that they will be checking phones, she transfers the chip the DEA gave her to another phone. Unknowingly, she puts it in Isabella's phone, and Lino kills her for being a mole. Gloria is distraught and the next morning yells at Lino. He wants to kill the chief of police, so he sends Gloria to Miss Tijuana and bribes the judges so that she will win since it's rumored the chief of police sleeps with every winner. She goes to the after party, where she agrees to meet the chief in another bedroom. She soon finds Suzu and tells her everything will be okay. However, when Suzu shows her the e* tattoo, she quickly realizes that Lino deceived her and that he had known where she was the whole time.In the room with the chief, she writes on a postcard that Lino is going to kill him. He quickly escapes outside, and Gloria goes to find Suzu. She does, and they head outside where Gloria shoots the chief of police but does not kill him. Lino arrives and kills him. Gloria points her gun at Lino, confessing she knows that he was aware of Suzu's whereabouts. He tries to bargain with her and then shoot her, but she shoots him first. This time fatally. The two women are arrested, and when Gloria is taken into an interrogation room, she finds Jimmy without tattoos. When he opens the door to get coffee, she sees that she is the Central Intelligence Agency. She quickly realizes that Jimmy was playing Lino and is an agent. He tells her that she could be very useful to the CIA and she agrees to help him if he drops all charges against her and Suzu.Gloria returns Suzu to her aunt and brother and goes back into the car with Jimmy. The final shot is of the car driving down the street.

Storyline

• Gloria finds a power she never knew she had when she is drawn into a dangerous world of cross-border crime. Surviving will require all of her cunning, inventiveness, and strength.