The bonds of friendship are pushed to the max in “Miss Bala,” which hits theaters this weekend. When Gina Rodriguez’s BFF goes missing after a nightclub shooting, she goes on a mission to find her, no matter the cost. Deco’s resident detective, Chris Van Vliet, went undercover to get us all the deets.
You’ve got drug dealing, gun running, crooked cops and murder, and Gina Rodriguez somehow has to survive it all to save her best friend in “Miss Bala.”
Trust us — this is one wild ride.
Gina Rodriguez gives male action stars a run for their money in “Miss Bala.”
She plays Gloria, an American tourist who gets sucked into a Mexican drug cartel led by Ismael Cruz Cordova.
Gina Rodriguez (as Gloria): “I just want to find my friend.”
Ismael Cruz Cordova (as Lino): “I need you to do a favor for me first. You mess around, and I’ll kill you both.”
Gina Rodriguez: “For me to play a woman that I feel really reflected the kind of actions that my mother would take, or my sisters or myself, was really important.”
Ismael Cruz Cordova: “You see this bad guy doing bad things, but then, as you go, you start understanding how he views himself in the world.”
Gloria’s kind of like an everywoman who finds strength she never knew she had.
Gina Rodriguez: “I just wanted to make sure that Gloria was acting fast but very realistic. She doesn’t all of a sudden start kicking everybody in the head and doing roundhouses.”
And Gina tells us she has a lot in common with her character.
Gina Rodriguez: “When in danger, I do act, and I act fast, and you can ask my friends around me. You want to be on my side for an apocalypse.”
Much of the action in “Miss Bala” takes place on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ismael Cruz Cordova (as Lino): “Whether or not you survive is entirely up to you.”
The border scenes give the film an unexpected timeliness that Ismael finds very cool.
Ismael Cruz Cordova: “Our job is to reflect what’s happening nowadays, and for people to extract meaning from there.”
For Gina, how the film was created was as important as the finished product.
Gina Rodriguez: “What was beautiful about the fact that Latinos and Latinas made the movie is that we were able to control characterizations of ourselves. We were able to make it very truthful to our experiences.”
Gina Rodriguez (as Gloria): “In the end, the bullet settles everything.”
By the way, “bala” is Spanish for “bullet.”
Also, “Miss Bala” is a remake of the 2011 Mexican film of the same name.
Gina said she purposely didn’t watch the original until she was finished working on her film, which she considers a reworking of the original film and not a remake.
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