If a video camera which Mexicans can't see was invented and used to follow someone being blackmailed into working for an organised crime group, the result would look a lot like Miss Baja.

In this completely undramatic film there is no soundtrack and there are no heroics. The protagonist, a young Mexican woman called Laura, through some believably unfortunate circumstances finds herself being blackmailed into working for the criminal group La Estrella who are involved in a messy war with the authorities near the US border. She parks a car with bodies in the boot outside an embassy, she smuggles drug money to San Diego, her beauty becomes a curse. And yes, she gets raped, though by the time it happens (at the hands of the main supporting character, the leader of La Estrella) it seems inevitable. And at no point does she rebel or struggle in any way likely to get her killed, in her position no-one would unless they were in a film.

Throughout the film the actors are hard to fault, the gangsters are portrayed as Laura is, like normal people struggling to survive and at times just as scared as she is. The leader of La Estrella, though his actions are mostly abhorrent, never comes across as evil, only pragmatic and one step ahead of everyone else. He also remains a very mysterious character, as at no point in the film does the viewer know any more about what he will do next than Laura. Since the film revolves so closely around her, you find yourself dreading his next move and surprised when you realise he could have been a lot worse.

For all of the realism in the film, it is never boring. The major events of the film play out in what seems a realistic way, but include all the apparel of a drug war: executions, smuggling, a pitched street battle between gang and police and tension which just builds and builds from early on until the end of the film.

Miss Baja is really good. I mean it.

4/5