By Mauricio LaPlante

Staff Writer

Hollywood’s remake of the Mexican film “Miss Bala” proves that revenge is an American vanity.

“La bala (the bullet) settles everything,” is the main pitch of the marketing campaign for the 2019 version of “Miss Bala” released by Columbia Pictures.

Arguably, the quote somewhat encapsulates a convenient ending for the film’s confusing plot.

Laura, played by Gina Rodriguez, arrives in Tijuana, Mexico to meet an old friend. The two go clubbing together, almost get killed in a shootout and wind up getting kidnapped.

After dealing with perhaps the most inept criminals of Tijuana, Laura ultimately worms her way out of a shootout to kill a traitorous cop, picks up an assault rifle and leaves the most elite of Baja California’s corrupt officials and

drug traffickers showered in bullets.

However, the original film released in 2011 has a far different narrative.

In the remake, a beauty contest gets muddled in an awkward assortment of plot devices.

In the Mexican version, it takes on an entirely different role as a symbol for Laura’s hopes and dreams. At least for me, the pun Miss Bala (Bala instead of Baja) fits more in the original.

Though the American film resembles some scenes from the original, the Mexican version starts out with Laura entering the Miss Baja beauty pageant.

In the American version, Rodriguez’s character is a makeup artist with no hopes of becoming Miss Baja, which makes it look like she’s an American tourist just having a bad trip to Tijuana, rather than someone having their hopes and dreams crushed.

“My dream is to represent the beautiful women of my state,” the original film’s Laura says as she enters the Miss Baja beauty pageant. It all goes to hell shortly afterward.

The cinematography and pacing of the film makes what would otherwise be the most mundane b-roll and exposition, into a portrait illustrating the cycle of abuse fueling the drug trade from Mexico to the United States.

The camera work takes the viewer through swift one-shot scenes that show violence unhindered.

It also shows claustrophobic shots that place the viewer close up to the trauma and pain Laura has to endure throughout the movie.

It makes clear that once she’s dragged into the criminal circles of Tijuana, there is no escape for Laura from the violence that surrounds her.

When each one of Laura’s tormentors is introduced in the film they are either out of focus or have the back of their head to the frame.

This adds an ambiguity to the villains of the film, showing that there’s not one face that can be attached to abusers and their crimes are not rooted in one group.

Beyond the masterclass in filmmaking director Gerardo Naranjo gives within the first 20 minutes of the original flick, he is relentless in showing the endless cycle of trauma Laura has to endure.

It gets to a point where the agony drags on for a bit. The continual abuse of Laura starts to verge towards exploitation of her pain without any resolution.

Despite the film’s lack of a clear solution towards the mental and physical damage illegal drug trafficking inflicts on women, it has real world implications.

A United Nations study from 2014 claimed that the amount of women who are “participants and victims” within the drug trade is “underestimated and understudied.” The study claims countries across North America, including the U.S., overlook women affected or involved in the sale of illegal narcotics.

In Latin America, the study suggests that femicide, murder of women, in Honduras increased by 93 percent in 2009.

But the original film does not end in a pity party.

After Laura falls from being crowned as Miss Baja in the beauty pageant to being framed as a conspirator to kill a general in Mexico, the finish is hardly a deus ex machina.

Instead of being taken to prison, she is abandoned in the streets of the city.

The film ends with the final frame showing the back of Laura’s head to the audience, suggesting that this could be any woman.

Know this, as exciting as it may be watching Rodriguez take the lead in an American remake of a gritty Mexican crime film, the continuing cycle of trauma the original film depicts must not be forgotten.