eenaged Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) lives in a village outside Bogotá where she cleans and trims long-stemmed roses for overseas shipment and supports a male-less family that includes her mother, aunt, and older sister and her child. Disenchanted and pregnant, she quits and bolts from home.
At a local festival she meets Franklin (Jhon Alex Toro) who tells her she can make quick cash as a “mule,” a drug-running courier who ferries grape-sized cocaine pellets into New York City. Lucy (Guilied Lopez) teaches her the ropes. In Bogotà she’s escorted to a lab where she swallows 62 pellets. It seems simple enough.
Loaded up, Maria joins Lucy on the flight north. But the trip turns into a nightmare when Lucy begins feeling sick. Californian Joshua Marston’s debut feature is a thrilling work, thanks in large measure to Colombia actress Catalina Sandino Moreno’s Maria. Single-mindedly intent on improving her life, she does the unthinkable. The story is her fallout.
