Maria Full of Grace

Buy This Item Maria Full of Grace by Hbo Home Video  Available from Amazon  $14.99  on 11-14-2008     (Drama) Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino), a bright, spirited 17-year old, lives with three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural Colombia. Desperate to leave her job stripping thorns from flowers in a rose plantation, Maria accepts a lucrative offer to transport packets of heroin-which she must swallow-to the United States. The ruthless world of international drug trafficking proves to be more than Maria bargained for as she becomes ultimately entangled with both drug cartels and immigration officials. The dramatic thriller builds toward a conclusion so powerful and revealing it could only be based on a thousand true stories. Reader Reviews In MARIA FULL OF GRACE, Joshua Marsten has created a fascinating, thought provoking film about the some unbelievable aspects of the drug trade, and the rather normal people who get caught-up in it. Maria Alvarez is 17 years old in Bogota, Columbia, who is pregnant, stuck with a loser boyfriend and a dead-end job in the rose industry. She jumps at a chance for adventure, and a chance to get more money than she would make in years, and agrees to become a drug mule, or a person who swallows drug pellets and transports them to the US. We watch with horror and fascination as to how the pellets are prepared, and how Maria is forced to swallow 62 of those pellets (swallowing 1 is not easy - its akin to swallowing those huge grapes in one big swallow - no biting and chewing allowed!) Her adventure has hardly just begun, as she then has fly with the pellets to New York, avoid the scrutiny of fellow passengers (for not eating - as her stomach is packed with drugs) make it through immigration, and reach finally 'hand over' her drugs to local drug pushers. If one pellet even slightly breaks inside her, she faces certain death. Then, she would have to learn to navigate a foreign country in which she does not know the language or customs. As other reviewers have said, this film is very well acted. Catalina Sandino Moreno earned a well deserved Oscar for her performance, but her co-actresses and actors did a fantastic job as well. The pacing is fantastic: the best part of the film was the airplane and customs scene. I felt like I was watching a cross between a documentary and a thrilling action film: the suspense was unbelievable: would Maria make it through the plane ride with drugs intact? Would the Customs Officers catch her? What would happen if she was caught? This is one of the more most thought provoking films I have seen in a long time, as Marsten has created an intelligent film which does fall prey to stereotyping. Maria is no angel. I felt torn about her character: while admiring Maria for her strength and intelligence, I also felt that her actions were morally reprehensible, as she actively chooses to become a part of a drug trade that has destroyed the lives of so many. Marsten makes it clear that her life in Columbia really was not that bad - she was more bored and adventure seeking than poor and desparate. Marsten's Maria is strong and smart, but clearly also a bit selfish - all in all, a normal person with strengths and faults. Speaking of breaking stereotypes, Marsten gives insightful portrayals of life in Columbia (we see Maria's family is a bit short on cash, but live in a cozy home, far from the ravages of the drug war) and life of Columbian immigrant community in the US (a colorful, tight, well-knit community looking out for one another, affected by the drug trade but hardly defined by it). It is worth going through the extras, especially Marsten's voice-over during the film. Marsten offers amazing insights on drug mules and the drug trade (discovered through his research for the film), life in Columbia and the US for Colombians and Columbian immigrants, and his thought processes and events in creating the film, casting it, and designing and editing it.

Maria Full of Grace Available from Amazon Price: $14.99 Updated on 11-14-2008.

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