Maria Full of Grace Reviews

• Catalina Sandino Moreno's compelling debut performance

  
  By A2NJO6YE954DBH on 2004-12-22
  In this week's "Entertainment Weekly" Stephen King picked "Maria Full of Grace" as his favorite film of 2004, which is certainly an interesting thing to know before watching this independent film from writer-director Joshua Marston. The picture on the DVD cover shows Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) posed as if she were about to receive Holy Communion. Only instead of receiving the host Maria is about to swallow a pellet containing heroin wrapped in the finger of a latex glove. That particular image is not present in the film with as much symbolism as it is on the cover, but it does represent the crucible of Maria's odyssey.
  
  Maria is 17 and works in Colombia picking the thorns off of roses before they are shipped overseas. Although she is clearly a bright girl, Maria discovers that she is pregnant. To make things worse her boyfriend is a loser, her boss at work is a jerk, and her family needs her to provide money. So after Maria quits her job she is introduced to a man in Bogotá who will give her $5,000 for flying to New York City with 62 of those pellets in her stomach as a "mule" for a drug lord. For Maria that amount is a virtual fortune and seems worth the risk that one of those pellets could break in her stomach and kill her. So she practices swallow grapes so that she will be able to do what needs to be done to get her money.
  
  There will be several mules on this particular flight, a practice known as "shotgunning" that Marston learned about and which inspired his original script. The idea is that if you put several mules on the same plane and plan on U.S. Customs catching one of them, which would make it easier for the rest of the drugs to get through. Also on the plane with Maria are her friend, Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), who is jealous of the money her friend is going to make, a mule on her third run, Lucy (Giulied Lopez), who wants to visit her sister in New York City, and at least one more experience drug smuggler.
  
  "Maria Full of Grace" sets the stage for the big trip by paying attention to the process by which Maria first practices, and then swallows all those pellets. This serves to underscore how dangerous this is going to be and you know that something is going to go horribly wrong. It is just a question of how many of these girls will be dead by the time it is all over and what exactly Maria will do to earn the sobriquet of the title. Marston does touch on all of the mules on the plane, but the focus of the story is on Moreno and her compelling performance. Clearly Marston is out to make a point, but because this is a low-budget independent film he is forced to tell it simply. Ironically, his leading actress is so good that we are concerned more with her survival than any stinging indictment of the use of mules by Colombian drug cartels.
  
  Catalina Sandino Moreno won the best actress award a the 2004 Berlin Film Festival along with Charlize Theron in "Monster," which is interesting simply because the performances are pretty much at opposite ends of the acting spectrum. Since "Maria Full of Grace" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2004, where it won the Audience Award, Moreno's performance would be eligible for the next Academy Awards. Usually Oscar nominations focus on movies released in December and as a rule ignore anything released before the Summer blockbuster season, but what Moreno did in this film might be too impressive to forget (Addendum: For once I was right and Moreno is nominated for Best Actress).
  
  

• Forgive her Father, for she has sinned....

  
  By A1DZKOOMMJM1MI on 2004-08-20
  Maria Full of Grace is a moving and powerful motion picture about a girl who goes in over her head when she longs for a better life. We follow Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) from her dead end job stripping roses in Colombia to a new opportunity--becoming a "mule," by ingesting drugs in large capsules and smuggling them to New Jersey. What follows is a gritty, fast-paced, and suspense-filled story
  
  Remember the name Catalina Sandino Moreno. The heartfelt and harrowing performance she gives here has won her a heap of awards and I am sure there are many more to come. First-time director Joshua Marston, who also wrote the taut screenplay, shows Maria being taught how to swallow drugs wrapped in packets -- she sips soup to make them go down without gagging. If the drugs in her belly should seep out during Maria's turbulent jet flight to New York, she could be poisoned or arrested or both. Marston builds incredible tension. But it's the human drama etched on Moreno's young, weary face that gives Maria its potent punch.
  
  This Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance is a terrific film; shocking, engrossing, and entertaining. But what makes Maria Full of Grace an extraordinary experience is its ability to be ordinary. We see everyday life here, plausible motives, convincing decisions, and characters who live at ground level. The movie's suspense is heightened by being generated entirely at the speed of life, and showing us what probably would happen, and not some implausible fairy-tale.
  
  

• An Indictment of More Than Drug Smugglers

  
  By A2PR6NXG0PA3KY on 2008-07-27
  Painful and ugly, Maria Llena de Gracia is also a powerful experience of vicarious desperation and deprivation. The story of a village girl in Colombia whose family, novio, and job all fail her at the same moment. She rushes heedlessly into big trouble, which in Colombia can only mean the cocaine trade. Coke merchants and smugglers are not nice people; we know that, and to see this film as an indictment of their viciousness is only a fraction of the movie's content. It's also, and more importantly an indictment of the global economy, the Octopus of our era with far stronger tentacles than the railroad of the early 20th Century. The indictment is clear from the first scene of the movie, when ALL the young women of the community report for work through a high wire fence to the warehouse where roses are trimmed and wrapped for export to North America. There is no other work in the village, no subsistence, no options, no future. If it were in Mexico - and there are exactly the same horrible sweat-shops in NAFTAfied Mexico - one would have at least the option of illegal emigration to El Norte, but in Colombia, it's 'muling' drugs or maid service. Frankly, I doubt that many American viewers of this film really saw what it was about from the Colombian perspective. Stopping the drug traffic isn't just a matter of spraying lethal chemicals over the countryside or supplying arms and helicopters to the latifundistas who own the government, and it isn't just a matter of reducing demand from the two poles of American society - the marginalized Black and the overprivileged White - either. It's a matter of facilitating the recovery of a diverse local economy, in which most people can make a living and a few can even find opportunity without crime and violence.
  
  The Spanish spoken in this film, by the way, is extremely hard to catch unless you've heard the rural dialects before. The "vos" forms are used throughout (vosotros in Spain, the second person plural) and slang is pervasive. Even my son, who went to public elementary school in Spain and who speaks like a native, had to have the English subtitles.
  
  

• Authentic, honest, and powerful

  
  By AT04V4H3AO3T5 on 2005-08-18
  Director Joshua Marston made MARIA FULL OF GRACE on a tight budget, but the result is a compelling closely-focused film which documents a segment of the drug trade while managing to avoid the obvious stereotypes. The story centers around the unhappy teenaged rose-worker Maria, played wonderfully by newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno, who agrees to swallow heroin for transport to New York in return for a big payoff.
  
  The orchestration and consequences of a single drug run from Colombia to New York comprise the main dramatic content of this film. Throughout, Marston pointedly avoids the caricatures commonly found in the drug film genre. Maria, unhappy throughout, is nevertheless not on the edge of desperation when she makes her choice to become a drug mule. The Colombian drug lord is not the menacing figure one might expect, at least as he is portrayed interviewing Maria for the job and preparing her for her journey. Even the U.S. Customs agents in New York, conceivably an irresistible target for filmmakers with a "message," are portrayed as professional and sympathetic.
  
  One is continuously struck by the detailed realism and honesty of the film; Marston insisted upon using only Colombian actors in the roles of Colombians (though he filmed largely in Ecuador), and the other small details of the movie are indicative of the extensive research that went into its making. That the movie made a profound impact in Colombia, where it premiered, testifies strongly to its authenticity. The story is powerful and horrible and realistic, but one can also perceive a hopeful optimism in it by the end.
  
  MARIA FULL OF GRACE is not always an easy film to watch, and some of the more disturbing images are bound to linger on the mind longer than one might wish. Nevertheless, I could not give a stronger recommendation than the one I give for this movie. Every performance in this film is top rate.
  
  The DVD release of MARIA FULL OF GRACE includes the original and international trailers of the film as well as a helpful and enlightening audio commentary from director Joshua Marston.
  
  Jeremy W. Forstadt
  
  

• Beautiful Movie

  
  By A28QRMZMV1UCTX on 2005-08-22
  I love this movie, it was one of the best movies I have seen all year. I can not speak or understand Spanish, so I did rely on the subtitles which I really wasn't bothered by. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, and after about 20 minutes, I forgot I was reading at all.
  
  
• A Common Situation Portrayed Brilliantly
  By AWPODHOB4GFWL on 2005-07-06
  Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a seventeen year old living a poor farming life in Columbia with her mother, sister and her niece whose father has deserted them. After losing her only job in her community, Maria finds herself involved with smuggling heroin into the USA. This would give her enough money to start a new life in what is referred to as `the magical land' (El Norte). Desperate, she finds herself in a situation completely unlike she expected and meets tragedy and betrayals everywhere she goes. However, there are those kind enough to understand her and support her - if she manages to live. Moreno was up for Best Actress for this role, which is uncommon for a non-UK or American actress.
  
  
• Portrait of a drug mule.
  By A3CH1KT8XQE8SA on 2004-07-30
  Most movies about the drug trade tend to either focus on the drug dealers or the users; little cinematic attention has been focused on role of the mule. For this very reason MARY FULL OF GRACE is an insightful and provocative look into how cocaine is smuggled into the United States. In a small town outside Bogota, Colombia young Maria Alvarez quits from her assembly line job and dumps her loser boyfriend she contemplates options available to her. At a dance she meets Franklin who befriends her and offers her a job including "travel" and good money. While the risks and harm are significant Maria decides to take Franklin up on his offer. After swallowing 62 cocaine pellets she flies to New York City in return for a handsome sum of money.
  
  MARIA FULL OF GRACE is a superb film filled with drama and emotional depth. One can't help but emphasize with Maria's dire situation and hope that she doesn't get caught by the U.S. Customs, or even worse, die after a cocaine pellet explodes in her stomach while in transition. This film succeeds in putting a human face to the mule and succeeds in adding clarity to their desperate situations. It is a film about real life.
  
  MARIA FULL OF GRACE is undoubtedly one of my favorite foreign films of 2004.
  
  
• Superb, just superb
  By A2ODBHT4URXVXQ on 2005-01-09
  Set in Colombia, Maria Full of Grace focuses on the choice an independent-minded pregnant teenager makes in order to escape a stifling home situation, a heading-no-where boyfriend situation, boredom, and lack of other opportunities. She agrees to be a mule, a drug runner, for lots and lots of money. The process of swallowing the large capsules is described in such detail that you nearly gag along with her as she struggles to get the hang of it, knowing she will die of a heroin overdose should one break.
  Turns out there are 4 female mules on her flight from Bogotá to NYC. Only 3 make it thru Customs, and only 2 survive to carry on with their lives.
  The lead role of Maria is played to perfection by Catalina Sandrino Moreno, an actress whose face conveys all her inner conflicted feelings with a bare minimum of movement.
  Very powerful film in every way.
  
  
  
• All Praise Maria
  By A2BRVLLGGLX08G on 2005-07-28
  Maria Full of Grace, directed by Joshua Marston, tells the story of a Columbian teenager, Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), who quits her job at a flower plantation and becomes a drug smuggling mule. Things go wrong as one of Maria's mule friends becomes sick as a pellet of drugs leaks into her system and thus leads Maria to find her friend's sister and forge a new life for herself and her baby.
  Catalina Sandino Moreno is brillant and beautiful as a young woman struggling to overcome the hardships placed upon her due to socio/geographical poverty. This young actress stikes the right chord as a survivor and pioneer of a new way of life no matter what the risk. The director Joshua Marston brings to life the tradegy of low wages that plauge many Cental and South Americans and the dangers many immigrants (legal or otherwise) face when enter a new environment. The human drama, sacrifice and danger comes across as real and unforgettable.
  
  
• Outstanding portrait of a young woman
  By ABN5K7K1TM1QA on 2007-01-07
  "Maria llenas eres de gracia," is one of the outstanding films of the new century, and one of the best I've seen in months. Joshua Marston, who wrote the script and directed, took a commercial idea--that of telling a story about the "mulas" who smuggle drugs into the US by swallowing pellets of cocaine or (in this case) heroin wrapped in latex which they later excrete. Should one of them burst before it is passed out of the body, it is likely the mule will die. It's a risky business in more ways than one, and only somebody desperate or foolish would do it.
  
  So the first thing that Marston must do is establish Maria's character in such a way that we can believe she would do something like this. She is, on the one hand, an ordinary 17-year-old Columbian girl who works stripping the thorns from the stems of roses in a factory. She lives at home with her mother, sister and her sister's baby. She has a boyfriend. She has to work to help support the family. On the other hand she is a headstrong person, a pretty girl with a head on her shoulders.
  
  But Maria is not exactly desperate. She is a bit of a gambler, somewhat foolish, no doubt, but she is also a strong person with great personal integrity. Marston allows us to see in the beginning of the film that she will take chances that others won't. She climbs up onto the roof of a building, a climb her boyfriend is afraid to make. We see her tell her boss (more or less) to take this job and shove it when he won't let her go to the bathroom. And we realize shortly thereafter why she needs to go to the bathroom more often than usual. We watch her tell her boyfriend about her predicament, and she does it in such a way that we can tell that she is searching for how he really feels. And when she finds out he doesn't really love her, at least doesn't love her the way she wants to be loved, she leaves him.
  
  But now she is in a fix. Her job helped pay for the family's bills. Now the situation is set. Her character is set. The premise of the film can unwind: and so she meets a young man on a motorcycle who tells her how she can make some serious money smuggling drugs into the US.
  
  Imagine how the average Hollywood director would fashion a movie from such a premise. There would be brutality, gun fights, car chases. Cardboard villains would exploit Maria and others like her. There would be some heroics and perhaps a knight in shining armor would save Maria.
  
  But that is not how Marston plays it. He opts for realism and he doesn't wallow in the violence or the exploitation. He keeps the focus on Maria and her personal struggle to find herself and to deal with the circumstances she has gotten into. The characters are real, the situations are authentic, and the details are closely observed and realistic. We see Maria practice swallowing large globe grapes. We see the people in the drug-smuggling business and some of the other mules. We see the security people at the airport and the young men who watch the girls until the pellets are passed. There is no glamor among these characters. It is clear they are patterned after real people who could actually be in this ugly business. And in the end we see the triumph of Maria's character.
  
  What makes this such an outstanding movie is not only the careful, clear and veracious way that Marston tells the story, but the compelling performance by Catalina Sandino Moreno who plays Maria. She is a very talented young actress who has the kind of beauty that suggests something close to nobility of character, if I may use such an old-fashioned phrase. It is this quality of hers that Marston captures and emphasizes. The result is one of the most arresting performances I've seen in quite a while. Moreno appears entirely real, completely divorced from any phony celluloid heroine. She became to me--and this is what all great actors can do--someone I know, someone I care about, and I was filled with emotion as the movie ended.
  
  "This is a movie about a girl becoming a woman," is the way Moreno expressed it. Marston puts it this way, "I realized...I was making a film about a girl who was doing something universal in trying to figure out the meaning of her life." This is really what the story is about: becoming a woman in this world of risks and trade-offs, of dangers and obligations.
  
  A movie that is a work of art and worthy of something more than the diversion of an evening should affect the viewer emotionally, intellectually and artistically. Maria Full of Grace is such a movie, a movie that comes along perhaps once a year, or perhaps only once in several years. It's that good.
  
  By all means see this for Catalina Sandino Moreno who was nominated for Best Actress by the Academy in 2005 but lost out to Hilary Swank for her performance in Million Dollar Baby (2004). And see it for Joshua Marston who made it real.
  
  
• Para la audiencia hispana
  By A16PZJU3R06AS2 on 2004-12-21
  Quería escribir una crítica a esta película, pero al ver que habían tantas otras, decidí hacer una porque no había ninguna en Español. Esta película tiene una particular diferencia con otras extraordinarias películas colombianas: que los productores supieron promocionarla en Estados Unidos y mucho más público que de costumbre pudo verla. Generalmente las películas colombianas en este país sólo se pueden ver en festivales de cine colombiano al que asiste el limitado público interesado en este género de películas. Digo limitado comparado con la mayoría que va a ver producciones de Hollywood. También el director y parte del equipo de producción es estadounidense, otra diferencia. Pero no digo ésto para quitarle méritos a la película. Es excelente. La trama es interesante y lo mantiene a uno atento. La actuación es muy buena y natural. Catalina Sandino, la protagonista, ha sido elogiada y reconocida ampliamente por su actuación. El realismo, aunque no mágico, es cautivante; en las escenas de Colombia me sentí transportado, como si estuviera allí otra vez.
  
  La película es sobre una chica pobre de un pueblo cerca a Bogotá que queda embarazada por su novio. Ante la presión de su casa de aportar para los gastos, con un jefe insoportable que la lleva a renunciar y debido a la incertidumbre de su futuro, decide aceptar convertirse en una de las mencionadas "mulas" colombianas. El resto de la historia es mejor dejarla para que la disfruten, pero la trama se intensifica. Es una de las películas que ningún colombiano debería perderse o cualquier persona interesada en comprender mejor nuestra cultura.
  
  
• A Masterpiece
  By ACBPPIHHOJFR2 on 2005-07-21
  The most realistic story about drug traffic you'll ever see. This movie shows how colombian cocaine is infiltrated into the U.S. using people as "mules". Very accurate film on the subject. You can see how mules are recruited, why they agree to do it, and how they operate. What makes this film different is that none of the mules are thugs or oulaws, just regular women with regular dreams. What a debut for Catalina Sandino, unfortunately she didn't get the oscar...but she may get one soon
  
  
• Beautiful-Scary-Tragic-Hopeful
  By A392GH5N1V0U41 on 2005-09-28
  Too many contradicting adjectives to describe this movie, but they all fit. As an American who lived in Colombia and who currently works in the flower industry (in the US) I know many stories of the laborers who work at farm level. To most, the US is a goal to be reached but unfortunately some (as portrayed in this movie) have no other choice but to work as a "mule". Maria's story can be the story of any number of people who have been duped into believing that transporting drugs is relatively "fool-proof". I am glad that Catalina Sandino-Moreno and Joshua Marston got the recognition that they deserved in the film industry because the film itself is very well acted and it captivates the viewer. Unfortunately it is necessary to show Colombia's ugly side in order to tell this story accurately. Haunting and hopeful.
  
  
• Carrying The Weight of Your Future As A 'Mule'
  By A1TPW86OHXTXFC on 2005-10-08
  
  "These pellets contain heroin. Each weighs 10 grams. Each is 4.2 cm long and 1.4 cm wide. And they're on their way to New York in the stomach of a 17-year-old girl."
  
  Maria Alvarez, a seventeen year old from Columbia, is on a plane flying to New Jersey carrying her fortune in her belly. She is what is called in the drug business a "mule". "Or they are called "swallowers," drug couriers who rent out their bodies as cargo containers, each carrying upwards of a kilo, or 2.2 pounds, of packaged narcotics. It's an old trick, body packing, but on the rise, and getting more sophisticated. Increased airport security has caused some drug cartels to shift a majority of their small shipments out of carry-on baggage and into the less easily searched internal compartments of the "mule." Maria quit her job working on a flower farm where she was not treated well. She comes from a family of women, and she must provide some monies. Now, she is pregnant and without a job. She hooks up with a young man at a dance and he tells her about this easy money. it sounds dangerous and it is, but what else does she have?
  
  So, here she is with her best friend another carrier and a new friend ,Lucy, who has "muled" three times. They are picked up at the airport and brought to a small apartment. Here they are given laxatives to move the drugs along. The people they meet with are cruel and without morals.
  
  Lucy doesn't feel well, and this portends a tragedy. One of the packets must have opened, and is killing her with an overdose. In the night Mara hears noises, Lucy is missing, and the bathroom is full of blood. She and her friend pack and leave quickly They find their way to Lucy's sister's home in Queens. Lucy's sister opens her home to these strangers, thinking Lucy sent them. In time she finds out the truth ,and Maria and her friend are out on the street. They finally get their money and head back to Columbia, but what is their future? Can Maria continue to mule and put her life in danger and meet with these animals who only want their drugs? What about her baby, what will she do?. Can she return to her life she hated? Maria at seventeen has grown into a woman and must make major decisions so that her child will have a future. This is a movie of truth and daring and poverty and last chances. Recommended. Prisrob
  
  
  
• A brutal, noble, beautiful film.
  By A1FG91CM8221X1 on 2004-09-05
  To American audiences lulled by action flicks and insipid teen comedies, Joshua Marston's "Maria Full of Grace" is a bucket of cold water in the face. Shot in jittery, cinema-verite fashion, it tells the story of Maria Alvarez, a spirited young woman facing dead-end prospects in her small Colombian town, who takes the only apparent way out--signing on as a drug mule, swallowing packets of heroin and transporting them in her stomach from Bogota to New York. And thus, as Marston makes brutally plain, she leaps from the frying pan into the fire. Writer-drector Marston passes no judgment on Maria, though surely everyone who sees this film will feel renewed loathing for the drug trade. Maria is a headstrong but decent and moral young woman, whose only real crime is having been born into a world in which the deck is always stacked against her. As Maria, Catalina Sandino Moreno gives a beautiful, heartbreaking performance. Her final scene--in which Maria comes to a decision that leaves her well and truly alone--will haunt you for a long time. "Maria Full of Grace" may well be the best film ever made about illegal immigrants to the U.S.; in my opinion, it deserves comparison with "Umberto D," "The Bicycle Thief," and other classics of Neo-Realism.
  
  
• a short story does not a movie make !
  By AJ9FC1GZOTA1O on 2005-02-12
  do not believe any of the over rated overblown things you`ve heard or read about this trifle--- you dont realize how trifling it is until the credits incredulously start rolling- and u realize that this excuse for a movie is over b4 it ever got off the ground-----not so much harrowing as annoying--- the movie based on a short story about drug mules-- hacked out in 2 days- shot nicely-- the camera stays over long on the actresses face--- mainly because nothing much else is happening ! one dimensional characers and situations--drama requires a character changing ! some transformation-- a vicarious journey the promise of a catharsis -- this is what dramas are made of----much like another over rated waSTE OF CELLULOID CITY OF GOD-- ANOTHER MOVIE I LOOKED FORWARD TO SEEING --only to be repulsed-- seduced by the blazing camera work--- i watched till the story made me sick----this movie with its own certain charms--- the competent pouty actress (that the camera stays on sometimes painfully too long ! )a feel for the people is evident-- the casting is fine and good production values--but to no avail- only making the thing more disappointing ! and THERES not much to thiNk aBOUT when its over b4 it began-- except how u wasted 2 hours of yer life !! and like louis b meyer said or was it sam goldwyn - you got a message ?? call western union !!!! movies have a higher calling - this is not worth yer time-- believe me !
  
  
• An Extraordinarily Powerful Film & An Amazing Acting Debut!
  By A1RECBDKHVOJMW on 2005-02-24
  Catalina Sandino Moreno recently won a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her stunning portrayal of Maria in Joshua Marston's "Maria Full of Grace." This was a debut performance for Ms. Sandino Moreno, a native of Bogotá, Colombia, who developed an interest in acting while in high school. She subsequently studied theater and acting and caught Marston's eye when she auditioned for this part. He took a risk by casting the inexperienced young actress as Maria and, in return, she delivered - bringing tremendous depth to the complex and demanding role.
  
  Seventeen year-old Maria Alvarez works on a flower plantation outside Bogotá, stripping thorns off roses in preparation for shipping. It's a dead-end job and her future doesn't look to improve much. A spirited, independent young women, with a sense of adventure, she is obviously bored with the work and her abusive supervisor, disenchanted with her immature boyfriend, and fed-up with her family, which receives almost her entire paycheck. When Maria discovers she is pregnant, she accepts the offer to carry drugs to the US as a mule. There is no way, however, that she could have imagined the nightmarish and threatening world she becomes involved with.
  
  Films about the drug trade abound, from this year's "El Rey," (also up for an Academy Award), to "Traffic," "Veronica Guerin," "Trainspotting," "Blow," even 1971's extraordinary "The French Connection," to name a few. However, "Maria Full of Grace" offers a totally different perspective on the business of drugs and drug smuggling. Even though the primary focus is on the mules here, a much broader picture is portrayed. It is painful, and extremely intense, to watch the desperate Maria force herself to swallow almost 70 thumb-sized pellets filled with finely powered heroin. She takes medication first to slow her digestion, all the while under the watchful eye of her runner. The danger of discovery and death is ever present, as is the potential risk to her family if anything goes wrong. A Colombian mule can earn between $5000. to $8000. per trip. Considering that the average annual per capita income is around $2,000, one gets a general understanding of why the girl might imperil herself to this extent. I felt a terrible sense of sadness throughout much of the movie. This particular film does conclude on a hopeful note, I think - for Maria anyway.
  
  Marston, who directed from his own script, takes us through the entire harrowing run in a manner so realistic that I felt I was watching a documentary at times. The building tension on the commercial plane flight to New York had me literally on the edge of my seat. And Catalina Sandino Moreno is a natural - absolutely gifted! This film is outstanding - certainly
  one of the best movies to be made on the subject. The supporting cast also deserves kudos, with special mention to Yenny Paola Vega, who plays the tenacious Blanca, and to Orlando Tobon - who is not a professional actor. His character, Don Fernando, is taken from fact not fiction. In Jackson Heights, Queens, Orlando Tobon is called the "mayor of Little Colombia." He makes his living as an accountant and travel agent, but he also serves his community as a social service counselor and all-purpose guide to many of the thousands of Colombian immigrants who come to live in his ethnically diverse Queens neighborhood. Tobon is also known as "the undertaker of the mules" for his work helping families repatriate the remains of Colombians who die smuggling drugs into New York.
  JANA
  
  
• Gripping
  By ATC2WM08ZF9C1 on 2005-07-14
  This movie will have you sitting on the edge of your seat, unsure and afraid of what the outcome is going to be. It tells the story of Maria, a headstrong and independent Columbian teenager, and the circumstances that led her to become a drug mule on board a plane en route to New York City, as well as how easily and tragically the young can be exploited, especially in a place where there are very few possible opportunites to choose. I also found the movie's portrayal of the conditions of life in South America and how America is viewed through their eyes eye-opening.
  
  This is a well written movie worth seeing.
  
  
• Sad, but never monotonous; poignant, but never watered-down.
  By A2KU5PG32H7QBN on 2004-08-29
  'Maria Full of Grace' is one of those cinematic gems that is nearly perfect, made even more special thanks to a stunning acting debut that is exciting in its sense of refreshing hope. The actress I am referring to is the incredible Catalina Sandino Moreno, who gives a nuanced performance as Maria Alvarez, a girl who is impregnated by her loser boyfriend, Juan (Wilson Guerrero), becomes fed up with her living situation, and decides to find opportunity in Bogota, her nation of Columbia's sprawling capital. On the way, she meets a local man she had danced with the previous night at a club and he informs her of his connections with a group of people who pay women to travel. "Travel?" she repeats. To her, this sounds like the beginning of a glorious new horizon. But she comes to find she is going to be a mule, a woman exploited by the drug business as a means of transporting drugs. However, she does not seem to care. America is hope. Her job requires that she is sent there, so she complies with the drug lord's wishes and swallows one pellet-sized drug container after another in a sequence that is hard to watch because of its painful, emotional subtleties perfectly emphasized by all involved.
  
  Throughout the film you feel more and more of these discreetly executed humanities pulsating from beneath the surface. For instance, I have not been more affected by a plane ride than when Maria, her friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), and two other mules (including an experienced, friendly mule Lucy, played with power by Guilied Lopez) are all scattered about a plane bound for America in pain from the sixty or so pellets stuck in their empty stomachs. The three central woman share glances, and each actress manages to maintain raw sympathy despite what were obviously terrible and immoral career choices; we feel for their desire for a better life, of which America is a beacon of in their eyes. Perhaps the only one of the three women we are not able to fully care for is Blanca. Though it is obvious she became a mule in order to be with her best friend Maria, I do not feel Vega's performance was strong enough to convey every emotional aspect of her character. She felt unrelentlessly annoying, in some moments. My friend and I kept whispering, "Stop ruining everything! Shush!" In a way Vega was simply one-note. A pity, because she is the film's only true weakness.
  
  The film's strongest aspect is by far Ms. Moreno. Despite the fact that this is her very first movie, she appears flawless in her intensity and strength. Her character, Maria, is someone who had to grow into a new, intimidating environment; she had to learn how to deal with emotions and situations that are not normal for her a seventeen-year-old. Ms. Moreno makes you care deeply for Maria, and her transformation is an august, breathtaking one.
  
  The writing is yet another plus in 'Maria Full of Grace.' It maintained striking realism, and some of the more simple words were chilling in their power. Consider when Juan and Maria decide whether or not they are going to have sex on top of a building's roof, high up from the ground. Maria grows stubborn and starts to climb. Juan is reluctant, and simply says, "You're going to come down the same way you came up--alone." I was blown away by the depth in those words. They were symbolic of some of the film's message, and they resonated strongly as I walked out of the theater.
  
  As a whole, 'Maria' is one of the most poignant films all year. It is swift in its execution, the ending is perfectly ambiguous, and the performances, apart from Vega's, are top-notch; it even manages to sneak in some important themes of honest grandeur, such as immigration. Ultimately, it sets out to make us realize that when people buy drugs, they are supporting those who take advantage of the dreams of people who simply want to escape the imprisonment of a life they would give anything to escape from. Lucy, the experienced mule, began trafficking drugs so she could travel to New York City and find her sister. Each time she arrived to drop off her pellets, she would gain only the courage to arrive at her sister's door. Not once in her two trips did she knock. She couldn't tell the sister she loved and hadn't seen for four years why she had inexplicably appeared. She was ashamed. 'Maria' makes it known that when people buy drugs, they don't support the exploitation alone, but also the progressive destruction of a person's humanity. The concept becomes truly mind-blowing.
  
  
• Honest, harrowing, understated film
  By A28LG2MEWGLKZW on 2004-10-01
  "Maria Full of Grace" is brutal, understated, unflinching cinema. It grabbed my attention without reaching for it; it held my attention without ostentation, without the need for building music, slow motion, computer effects or an obvious soundtrack.
  
  It is a scary, jolting dose of a reality - or what could be reality - where a young Columbian girl, Maria, just 17 years old, quits her job cutting and arranging flowers after being treated unfairly by her boss. Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) needs money to support her household, occupied by her mother, grandmother, sister and sister's baby, and she becomes desperate when she discovers she is pregnant.
  
  A friend Maria meets at a party tells her about a difficult job she could do. He tells Maria she will need to transport tiny capsules of heroin - stored in her pregnant stomach - to New Jersey, a place, she is told, is just a "small town outside of New York."
  
  Maria accepts the job, as do two other women she knows: one who is a friend, and one who is making a delivery to New Jersey for the third time.
  
  First time writer/director Joshua Marston does not waste any time with meaningless, self-conscious, uneven scenes as many first-timers often do. In the first 10 minutes of the movie, I immediately liked Maria. I understood her character, her nuances, her worries, her hopes and her attitude. Moreno, as Maria, is a charming, comely and vulnerable teenager with whom I cared for and sympathized.
  
  Since Maria's personality is well established in the first 30 minutes, and her choices stayed consistent and realistic throughout the movie, I believed each action she chose to take. I never shook my head or disagreed with any event in the plot; instead, I watched the unbearable tension unfold logically and skillfully.
  
  I watched Maria standing in an airplane, sweating, nearly crying, trying to keep 60 heroin capsules in her stomach, thinking about her baby, worrying what could happen to her family if she threw up, worried that she could die if one tablet would break. I watched with unbreakable interest, completely invested in the characters and their gruesome situation.
  
  "Maria Full of Grace" is not just engaging in its laudable moments of tension, disaster and disappointment - it also allows us to glimpse an intriguing and surprising story of an abject woman in a country we know little about.
  
  In many instances, the film creates a powerful glimpse of the dichotomy of North America and South America, of Hispanics living among Caucasians. It's a startling, depressing vision, and although the differences are shown upon the backdrop of a young, scared, confused woman delivering heroin pills, "Maria Full of Grace" is able to maintain a documentary-like feel, where we are being edified about the difficult, and in this case, illegal, struggles some Columbian people endure.
  
  But the movie never begs us to feel educated and aware; that feeling comes through naturally in the subtle skills of the writing, acting and directing, all of which come together to deliver the best movie of the year: a movie that has an understated, powerful tone that takes the efforts of many current films reaching for profundity and completely destroys them.
  
  
• Great small film and marketing done right
  By A2QHM5HBSIXRL4 on 2004-10-04
  For once, here's a small, low budget film done justice by its excellent marketing campaign. First, my compliments to whoever designed the movie poster - to the uninitiated, it would appear that Catalina Sandrino Moreno's 'Maria' is about to receive Holy Communion - a perfect juxtaposition in devoutly Catholic Colombia. Those who've seen the stark, no punches trailer know that Maria is receiving a baptism of a far different sort.
  
  I often get frustrated when a powerful film like 'East Is East' is marketed here as a 'breezy charmer' (no lie - that was the campaign for a movie that was anything but). So, I'm obligated to note when a movie and its marketing efforts respect the intelligence of its viewing audience. Thank you, HBO Films. And thanks, too, for taking a bet on writer/director Joshua Marston despite his brief biography. Good to see that HBO continues to recognize that the best ideas don't always come out of the Hollywood enclave.
  
  Ultimately, this movie works because of Catalina Sandrino Moreno's brilliant performance. You have to believe her naiveté, and for the ability of this 23-year-old to pull off a performance as a doe-eyed 17-year-old. How/why could anyone become a mule, you ask? 'Maria' makes you see how a person could find themselves compelled to make such a choice.
  
  'Maria' is also notable for its excellent depiction of the Colombian immigrants' support system in New York City, featuring a wonderful performances from Orlando Tobon as "Don Fernando" - a one-man office source of job leads, explainer of the U.S. legal system and all-around 'shoulder to lean on' for 'Colombians en el Exterior' in his neighborhood. Given that Sr. Tobon is also Associate Producer, I suspect 'Don Fernando' is not too far from the role he plays in real life.
  
  
  
• From a life that's hard to swallow, to the drugs that's leaves you hollow.
  By A3C6CZC2JP67VK on 2006-03-06
  When I first heard about María Llena eras de Gracia and its subject, I had many doubts about the treatment of such a delicate subject and how Colombian this movie was, with a writer/director from the USA; but when I heard the interviews and read the reviews I got really interested in the film and had the opportunity to see this film this afternoon.
  
  Maria Full of Grace is one of the better films of 2004: well acted, well written, and very unique in its' story. From the beginning to the end Joshua Marston chooses to present the story in a way that has us relating and sympathizing with Maria in her plight to find her place in the sun.
  
  A very real topic with very real portrayal and acting, this is definitely one of the better films to come out. Unusually well managed without being junked up with the usual Hollywood tawdry tinsel and situational extremes, this very human drama does more pound-for-pound than most films many times its size. It presents its story at a quick pace and leaves you wanting more.
  
  Overall, I enjoyed the film and recommend it to anyone in general, being a great triumph in film-making. I hope to see more films from Joshua Marston in the future.
  
  
  
• A terrifically acted, tense, drug fuelled melodrama.
  By A2EEUQ81DTY7G3 on 2004-09-22
  There are some terrific, tense scenes in Maria Full Of Grace, a heavily dramatic and horrifyingly real drug mule movie. This is a tormenting portrait of a resourceful young woman who refuses to play the hand that life has dealt her, which is to remain poor, and exploited in rural Columbia. The fierce and startlingly vital Maria Alvarez (the beautiful Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a seventeen-year-old Colombian teen. She's restless, rebellious, and feisty. She also has a loving mother, but she's tired of working at shearing roe stems at the local flower plantation, especially when she sees her wages going to support her sister (Johanna Andrea Mora), a single mother. She discovers she's pregnant and when she admits to her feckless and spineless boyfriend (Wilson Guerrer) that she doesn't love him, she quits her job and escapes to Bogotá and the promise of a better future.
  
  On her way to the big city, she meets a young man who invites her to become a mule for drug traffickers, who want her to help them transport heroin to the United States by swallowing 62 drug-filled pellets. Her best friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega) wants to join her. Maria has to learn how to swallow the pellets containing heroin by practicing on grapes given to her by her mentor drug mule friend Lucy (Guilied Lopez). Maria feels scared and vulnerable but she's determined to go through with the plan and escape the life she's known.
  
  Maria Full of Grace never shies away from showing us the risk and danger of the drug transportation underworld. From the terrifying plane trip, where Lucy begins to get sick to the tense moments where some of the girls are hauled in by immigration officials in New York, the movie is absolutely gripping in its verisimilitude, The viewer sees how the pellets are made and how the women suppress the gag reflex and manage to swallow them, and also how they cope when the ultimately get to the United States.
  
  The film cleverly refuses to pass judgment on these girls and the choices that they make. Their desperation and flaws are apparent but their motivations are completely understandable. There's lots of unpredictable plot twists as Maria is forced to survive in a country where she doesn't speak the language, and where anxiety is a daily force. Moreno is a revelation as Maria - easily one of the best, most exciting performances of the year; she is indeed full of "grace." Mike Leonard September 04.
  
  
  
• Dark yet hopeful film...
  By A36CHPMHHD1IO5 on 2005-01-14
  When I rented this film, I wasn't sure if the overall film was going to be a "downer". It just seemed like the overall topic and story of the film was going to be depressing, but that's not the case. Not entirely.
  
  Essentially it's about a teenage girl wanting to get out of a dead end life in Columbia, where the only job worth working at is picking roses, for an unsympathetic boss. The little money she makes goes towards her sister's baby, and the frustration to leave grows. Even though it's a dead end town (funny that New Jersey factors into the film), they still manage to have fun.
  
  Maria takes a ride with a "slick" (for small town) guy into Bogota where she planned to take a maid job, but instead got sidetracked into shipping drugs as a "mule". She befriends a girl named Lucy when she meets the drug dealer. He doesn't come off as the stereotypical druglord, but more fatherly, however he does lay down the law with her.
  
  The incentive is that all she has to do is go over for a week, and when she comes back, she'd have enough money to buy a house.
  
  Maria is pregnant from her boyfriend, who is just young and still into hanging with friends, and content to be as he is. I wouldn't say he was a "loser", but was more content with being there.
  
  Her best friend Blanca is more of a pain and "tag-along" than anything else, but winds up going along with Maria to be a "mule" carrying pellets of coke.
  
  The 3 girls go on the plane to New York/New Jersey, and the real adventure begins. Even though they are in another country, there are aspects of home there as well...
  
  The film isn't as harsh as "Amores Perros", the tone and theme of the film could be compared to "Real Women Have Curves", where both main characters center around young girls coming of age and escaping their families, although in radically different ways.
  
  The characters in the film are realistic and sympathetic, there are no stereotypical good or bad guys, the bad guys come off more as "doing their job" than anything else.
  
  I feel it's worth watching more than once and if you're a fan of Latino Cinema, a good story and independent films, it's an essential.
  
  
• A fantastic achievent.
  By A3FXRW8CQ3LE9U on 2005-06-29
  Catalina Sandina Moreno is one to watch. Its no wonder that she got nominated for an Oscar. Yes, I still marginally respect the whole affair. Both of my parents are colombian and I lived there for approximately 8 years. And no none of us have any affiliations with drug dealers. I guess this movie kind of hit me close to home, not because anyone in my family has been a drug mule mind you but because I recognized the speech patterns, I knew the places they were talking about, i had been to the places they were talking about. But that's not the reason why I cherish this movie so much. Rarely have I cared so much about a character. I love that girl. I've known girls like that. I wanted her to be allright, I wanted her to always be safe, I wanted her to stop doing stupid things, I wanted her to stop lying, tell the truth. This movie had a sense of dread which I have never felt in a movie ever. I just wanted her to make it so much. She's so charming, so good natured for a future drug mule anyway. But yet you still care for her and that I think is this movie's greatest achievement. That after she's done all these things and basically brought trouble upon herself, it's for a noble cause but still. you still like her, you still want her to do good, you are worried, you are sad, you are happy, you are amused, you are relieved. Highly recommended.
  
  
• Disturbingly, Drugs Might Set Some People Free
  By A2ATWKOFJXRRR1 on 2005-07-08
  Maria Alvarez works in a flower factory in Columbia, de-thorning roses for a living at the brusque age of seventeen. Her hands ache and bleed, her boss is verbally abusive, and her family (as most seventeen year olds think) don't understand that she wants more out of life. Then one day she meets a young boy who introduces her to a drug runner who hires "mules" (women who carry drugs in their stomachs and into the United States) and Maria's life changes drastically.
  
  But is it all for the worst?
  
  That's tough to say. Although we all know the terrible things that happen to these young girls (rapes, the pellets leaking in their stomachs and killing them, being arrested by border agents, etc.), the viewer has kind of a dark sympathy for Maria and her fellow mules. The amount of money they can make in one trip ($5,000) is a simple treasure to them.
  
  It took me a while to review this film simply because it IS so disturbing. The drug trade is a terrible thing that kills people all the time, but in this film we get to see how it benefits one individual ...but at what cost? Emotionally she's nearly torn apart (she has to watch another mule slowly, painfully, die after a drug pellet leaks in her stomach), but it also makes her a stronger person. She has means (via cash) to support herself and, come to find out, her unborn child.
  
  Will Maria remain in America, or return to her family in Columbia and raise her child there while continuing to be a mule? You'll have to watch it and find out.
  
  A simple film with a powerful message; a message that isn't as easy to swallow as a pouch full of heroin.
  
  
• Share the Humanity...
  By AR2T3NOGFNIUH on 2005-12-22
  Maria Full of Grace is what makes films great. You read about Maria's story in the papers and you'll shrug your shoulders and say, "she got what was coming to her, a person with no moral values". You see her story on the big screen and you understand her...and more importantly, you become involved in her life.
  
  First time film director, Joshua Marston shows what it means to be a mule with such step-by-step completeness that it's difficult to imagine that a documentary could be more detailed. It is a measure of Maria's desperation, her total lack of viable alternatives, that she should risk her life - all it takes to cause death is one leaky capsule - and at the same time place herself in the hands of murderously ruthless individuals.
  
  A strong indictment of international drug trafficking and its myriad causes, "Maria Full of Grace" nonetheless is no tract but a perceptive evocation of an appealing young woman undergoing self-discovery under the most dangerous circumstances. This film may be one of the finest and boldest strokes of drama ever accomplished in the history of cinema.
  
  Lead actress, Catalina Sandino Moreno may be in only her early 20s, but she is able to draw upon her considerable talent and training to create a portrayal that comes from deep within. She has a radiant screen presence that could give Salma Hayek a run for her money. You bleed for her survival and cringe whenever she fails.
  
  In his feature debut Marston reveals that crucial gift of blending acute observation with spontaneity, leavened with humor and compassion. One of the best moments in the film occurs when Maria takes notice of a New York flower shop filled with roses. Marston pauses just long enough for the implications to sink in - and not a second more.
  
  Marston's casting sense is unfailing right down the line. Yenny Paola Vega is Blanca, Maria's best friend, pretty, headstrong, a little chunky, well-meaning but not nearly as smart or nervy as Maria. One of the film's choicest roles falls to Patricia Rae as a kindly New Yorker originally from Colombia herself, who loves her homeland but is glad she fled it, given its present state, and is grateful for the opportunities New York has provided, no matter how hard she and her husband must strive to stay afloat.
  
  The contrast between Maria's hometown and Jackson Heights, Queens, the film's key New York locale, could hardly be more jolting visually, yet they are connected by the universal and eternal day-to-day struggle for survival on the part of those on the lower rungs the socioeconomic ladder. What's more, in its vitality and finesse, "Maria Full of Grace" is all of a piece - and both artistically and spiritually itself full of grace.
  
  
• Impressive Debuts for Marston and Moreno in Unadorned Story of a Teen Seeking a Better Lot in Life
  By A13E0ARAXI6KJW on 2006-03-11
  This first-time work by director/writer Joshua Marston is impressively unadorned in a way that surprised me because of what I perceived to be the predictable elements involved. For a low-budget indie, the 2004 film also has surprisingly first-class production values, most specifically the very crisp camerawork by Jim Denault, who captures the realism of the various locales - Bogota, New York City, Jersey City - without jittery stylization. The straight-ahead story focuses on seventeen-year old Maria, pregnant and in a dead-end job picking thorns off roses on a Columbian plantation. Tired of her presumed lot in life, she breaks up with her thoughtless boyfriend and connects with a friend who leads her to a drug lord. He offers her a job as a "mule", which means ingesting 62 pellets of heroin and traveling to New York to make the delivery.
  
  The stacked-deck set-up sounds like the plot would spiral into issue-oriented melodrama and "Scarface"-like bloody confrontations. Instead, Marston uses an almost matter-of-fact approach to the escalating complications that Maria faces in taking the job and her ensuing experiences in the U.S. There is a naturally spontaneous quality to the unexpected storyline that propels it with candor and emotional resonance. It helps that the filmmaker found the ideal Maria in big-screen rookie Catalina Sandino Moreno, whose plaintive presence and realistic acting provide the film a genuine soul at its core. The rest of the unknown cast seems incidental by comparison, though there is solid work by Moreno look-alike Guilied Lopez as Lucy, the more experienced mule facing inner turmoil about her decision; Patricia Rae especially powerful in her few scenes as Carla, Lucy's estranged sister living in New York (her no-nonsense but sympathetic character reminds me a bit of the roles Frances McDormand usually takes); and Yenny Paola Vega as Maria's clingy, foolhardy friend Blanca.
  
  As expected, the pellet ingestion scene is painful to watch, and there is some overly convenient wrap-up toward the end that seems to oversimplify the problems Marston painstakingly presents. In fact, at certain points late in the film, I did start to get concerned that he was going to turn the movie into a don't-let-this-happen-to-you parable, but luckily my worries were not realized. Regardless, it's a wondrous debut for both Marston and Moreno, and clearly both are well poised to do great work in the future. There is an informative commentary track by Marston on the no-frills DVD package.
  
  
• This movie is a must see
  By A3NO2UCXMGJ89L on 2007-01-14
  I just finished seeing this movie. I must say its a must see! Very powerful leaving you thinking. Catalina does a wonderful job in her role. And she deserved that award for her role.
  
  
• One of the Best movies of 2004
  By A2CN3U4JCMSMA on 2004-12-14
  This movie is very good. The story is so interesting. Once you start watching the movie, you don't want to blink your eyes. You don't want to miss any word, any sentence. This is a story of a pretty, smart, desperate but determined Colombian young girl, Maria. The title of this movie descibes her the best - full of grace. Yes, she is so gracefull. Everything she does is gracefull, but life makes you do indecent things sometimes and Maria goes for it. She decides to get involved in "muling", trafficing illegal drugs from Colombia into United States carrying drugs in her stomach! You have to watch the movie to realize how horrible this profession is. You can not describe it in words.
  And so, off she goes on this dangerous mission. I am not going to tell more about the plot because it won't be interesting for a reader to watch the movie if he/she knows the whole story. One thing I will tell, it is a very clever story. And what is very important, acting is superb. The role of Maria is played by very uknown actress, but she makes spectacular debut on the big screen.
  At the end, I defenitely recommend to watch this movie. And I give two reasons for this: first, yo meet this amazing girl, Maria, who is portrayed in so much details; and second, you learn a lot about lifestyle in Columbia and why do people risk their lives and do such indecent things. 5 Stars!!!
  
  

• The Motorcycle Diaries (Widescreen Edition)
• Amores Perros
• Y Tu Mama Tambien
• City of God
• Like Water for Chocolate