A film based on a successful Mexican film by the same name, the American version of the film suffers from what I feel a lot of remakes suffer from - being completely unnecessary.
There are mild spoilers in here, but since the film is so predictable and I don't think you should watch it anyway that shouldn't matter
On the right we have an inventive and exciting film that won a bunch of awards fir its edgy writing and gripping portrayal of the realities of Mexico; on the left we have a Hollywood remake that managed to capture none of those things.
They did it with a couple of my favorite foreign language films, Oldboy and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The original was spectacular but the only problem was that it wasn't in English so most people would have to read it. I don't understand why this is an issue.
Basically this movie is about a girl who goes down to Mexico to visit a friend and she ends up getting wrapped up in drug cartel operations. The scenarios she finds herself in are increasingly ridiculous and even the segments that are meant to be exciting battles are so impractical that even they are not exciting.
Example: The baddies number about 15 in 4 vehicles, the DEA and Mexican police outnumber them 3 to 1 in an ambush and also have tactical positioning. Nearly all of the cartel members not only survive but also escape easily. In the above image, those 2 spend at least 2 minutes with no cover while being fired upon by the dozens of heavily armed officers in the background.
The Mexico police must only hire future Stormtroopers or something.
From the official Zero Media channel
I believe that the purpose of this film was to launch Gina Rodriguez' career as some sort of action star but it failed terribly at that. This film is boring, predictable, and dumb. While Gina certainly has some acting chops and proves it in some of the scenes, this film is just downright bad and I would say it is one of the worst I have seen from 2019. I openly admit that I am deducting at least 2 points because they took a great original film and made it awful in the remake, as they tend to.
