Miss Bala (English: "Miss Bullet") is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on the 2011 Mexican film of the same name. The film stars Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, and Anthony Mackie, and follows a woman who trains to take down a Mexican drug cartel after her friend is kidnapped. The film was released in the United States on February 1, 2019, by Columbia Pictures, in Dolby Cinema. The film was a box office flop, grossing $15.4 million worldwide against a $15 million production budget. While Rodriguez's performance received some praise, critics compared the film unfavorably to the original, saying it suffered from "bland action and predictable story beats". Plot Gloria Fuentes is a Latin-American makeup artist from Los Angeles who goes on a trip to visit her best friend Suzu in Tijuana, Mexico. When the pair go to a local nightclub, Suzu plans to impress the local police chief, Saucedo, in order to help her chances of being in the upcoming Miss Baja California beauty pageant. When Gloria goes to the bathroom, armed gunmen break in through the vents and attempt to kidnap Gloria out of her stall, but she manages to escape while they shoot up the club. Chaos ensues as Gloria is separated from Suzu. The next morning, Gloria is unable to get in contact with Suzu and decides to ride with a police officer to try to find her friend. She informs the officer that she has information on the men who attacked the club, and the officer agrees to take her to the station for questioning. Instead, he drives to a remote area and leaves the car, whereupon Gloria is taken by members of Los Estrellas, the cartel behind the attack. The kidnappers take her to their headquarters, where Lino, head of Los Estrellas, agrees to help her find Suzu if she agrees to work for them, as her American citizenship makes her useful. Gloria is reluctant but eventually agrees. Her first job is to get into a car and park it at the corner of a building. Gloria does so, and when she leaves the car and joins Lino's men at the top of a hill, they detonate a bomb attached to the car and incinerate the building. Gloria later discovers that the building was actually a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) safehouse containing three agents