Miss Bala

Those who admired the gritty 2011 Mexican crime thriller Miss Bala will likely be dismayed, if not surprised, by its watered-down Hollywood remake.

Current events might lend an inextricable topicality to any film about Americans immersed in violence along the southern border, although any meaningful exploration of that sociopolitical subtext is compromised by an emphasis on formulaic female-empowerment melodrama.

The title character is Gloria (Gina Rodriguez), a California cosmetician who ventures to Tijuana to support her friend Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) as she competes in a beauty pageant. Prior to that, however, they’re in a nightclub where a shooting by gangsters targets police.

During the mayhem, Suzu disappears and Gloria tries to report the incident to police, only to be abducted by one of the shooters (Ismael Cruz Cordova) who finds Gloria alluring. Meanwhile, a DEA agent (Anthony Mackie) also sees her as a pawn in their efforts to eliminate the drug cartel’s influence.

As she desperately searches for Suzu’s whereabouts, Gloria’s loyalty is constantly shifting between Mexican police who are either corrupt or inept, renegade drug smugglers who are greedy and duplicitous, and American officials who have their own agenda. She realizes she can’t trust any of them.

The film tries to put a sympathetic human face on those caught in the middle of border conflicts — the original film was inspired by a true story, after all — yet seems to serve mostly as a cautionary tale about the dangers of traveling to Mexico with only a pair of high heels instead of flats.

Rodriguez (TV’s “Jane the Virgin”) capably handles the physical rigors or portraying such a resilient and tough-minded heroine, but she struggles to establish a deeper emotional connection.

As directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), the film maintains a mild tension that rarely rises to the level of its intended high stakes. Plus, rookie screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer sanitizes the dramatic texture of the source material with a series of far-fetched twists.

By this time, we’ve seen so many harrowing dramatizations of narcotics trafficking, from Traffic to No Country for Old Men to Sicario. By (perhaps unfair) comparison, Miss Bala presents an oversimplified and inauthentic depiction of cartel life. Either way, it won’t do much to boost Mexican tourism.

Rated PG-13, 104 minutes.