Featured Audience Ratings

• Dan S

  
  An original take on the drug trade, dealing with a seventeen year old girl (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who, pressured to find a job, agrees to become a drug mule, since the pay is good and it sounds like she will be taken care of. You don't know what to expect really after she… More
  An original take on the drug trade, dealing with a seventeen year old girl (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who, pressured to find a job, agrees to become a drug mule, since the pay is good and it sounds like she will be taken care of. You don't know what to expect really after she agrees to take the job, and neither does she. An overall incredible film with a powerful performance from Moreno (she got nominated for Best Actress). Although it loses a little steam in it's last half, this is a mostly excellent movie that feels authentic all the way through.

• Lady D

  
  An impressive film which shows a realistic story based around drug muelling. Great performances all around, but particularly from Catalina Sandino Moreno who played the lead character. A Drama which really pulls you in and see the circumstances from different viewpoints.… More
  An impressive film which shows a realistic story based around drug muelling. Great performances all around, but particularly from Catalina Sandino Moreno who played the lead character. A Drama which really pulls you in and see the circumstances from different viewpoints. Definitely a recommendation ? an instant favourite for me.

• Randy T

  
  A beautiful Colombian teenager discovers that 'easy money' isn't always so easy when she gets lured into the harsh, dangerous world of drug trafficking. In order for a so-called 'message film' to work there has to be at least one character that an audience… More
  A beautiful Colombian teenager discovers that 'easy money' isn't always so easy when she gets lured into the harsh, dangerous world of drug trafficking. In order for a so-called 'message film' to work there has to be at least one character that an audience can really care about, <i>Maria Full of Grace</i> has an abundance of them. A talented cast and no-nonsense scripting elevate this somewhat predictable storyline to something meaningful and moving. Four Stars.

• Megan S

  
  Really really good movie. For some reason I didn't realize it was in Spanish but I love Spanish movies. It was very real and sucked me in.

• Jennifer X

  
  very powerful and gripping story. and good wordplay with the hail mary prayer thing.

• Drew S

  
  Well-performed and fairly strong for such a low budget film, but rather thin. Not much actually happens. Better films can make such a minimal concept work - Maria Full of Grace falters here and there. This is probably because I feel no sympathy for Maria. She makes a slew of poor… More
  Well-performed and fairly strong for such a low budget film, but rather thin. Not much actually happens. Better films can make such a minimal concept work - Maria Full of Grace falters here and there. This is probably because I feel no sympathy for Maria. She makes a slew of poor decisions throughout the movie, only managing to dig the hole deeper, and it seems almost unfair that she got out of her rut with no personal retribution whatsoever. Though it wouldn't be true to say that she didn't learn anything, the movie feels a little more forgiving than the subject matter (and back of the DVD box) would lead you to believe. Still a good film, but not really great.

• Sanjaya &

  
  I completely confused with the plot that they made..

• Lanning :

  
  A hard story to take. My guess is that in real life, these women who actually do this are less fortunate. Grace: this is what Sandino Moreno's character is living by.

• Matthew R

  
  Imagine facing a choice that could release you from the struggles of being poor. Would you take that risk if it meant ruining your life or the lives of family and friends around you? There are many people who are faced with that problem every day. The fact that people are willing to… More
  Imagine facing a choice that could release you from the struggles of being poor. Would you take that risk if it meant ruining your life or the lives of family and friends around you? There are many people who are faced with that problem every day. The fact that people are willing to subject themselves to smuggle drugs in their own bodies for money really indicates the state of desperation in poor countries. This film gives us insight into the life of a 17 year-old girl, about the choices she's faced with. I think watching this film might give you a sympathetic understanding of the impoverished and a greater appreciation, it did for me. Catalino Sandino Moreno gives an outstanding performance. Maria Full of Grace is a serious but engaging film that shows the endless world struggle of the poor who want and try to get out of their desperate and imprisoning lives. Story: A Acting: A Direction: A Visuals: A Overall: A **** out of 4 stars

• Mike N

  
  The world was raising. Thunderous canyons shot from below to meet my footsteps. Forests rose and died behind my back. Birds evolved and turned to dust before me. The sky was fire and shadow, and it covered the sun like a closing fist. My hair was a wild brown spirit dancing in the… More
  The world was raising. Thunderous canyons shot from below to meet my footsteps. Forests rose and died behind my back. Birds evolved and turned to dust before me. The sky was fire and shadow, and it covered the sun like a closing fist. My hair was a wild brown spirit dancing in the tempest. My consciousness tore apart into a thousand different pieces, each shot itself like a rocketship to a thousand stars. The moon crashed into the earth. Humanity begged to be. Civilization threw its hands up. Existence screamed. My body is an auditorium. Memory is music fading, acoustics wearing. Starlight is taxed. Clouds rule the universe. The bridges I walk end before they begin. All the islands and planets are sinking. An air just above me is a melancholy fragrance, and yellowness stains reality. The madness of my flesh is annihilated. I am just a tangle of wires choking a soul, stranded in a breath and under the dead mountains. The edge is deep. I let go, and fall back into a flock of glimmering crystal angels. I dream that they are building me beautiful white wings.

• John B

  
  Heartbreaking when one thinks that this story is surely carried out on a weekly if not a daily basis. The drug mule carries the holy treasure within their own bodies with fear of being consumed by those drugs or facing legal penalties in the unexpecting importing country. A great… More
  Heartbreaking when one thinks that this story is surely carried out on a weekly if not a daily basis. The drug mule carries the holy treasure within their own bodies with fear of being consumed by those drugs or facing legal penalties in the unexpecting importing country. A great tale.

• Mike T

  
  The pacing of this film is seamless, brilliantly executed by writer-director Joshua Marston. It has an appealing visual sensibility and a consistent tone of immediacy, which heightens the desperation of the protagonist. Catalina Sandino Moreno is superb playing the lead, chewing the… More
  The pacing of this film is seamless, brilliantly executed by writer-director Joshua Marston. It has an appealing visual sensibility and a consistent tone of immediacy, which heightens the desperation of the protagonist. Catalina Sandino Moreno is superb playing the lead, chewing the scenery despite a solid supporting cast.

• Yinalí R

  
  Evil, realistic. Dramatic. But oh so true.

• Erin C

  
  Such a good movie. It was pretty sad, but it told a good story.

• Juli R

  
  This is a gritty movie that should make you question America's drug policies, when you see their effects on the most powerless, the mules.

• Stefan P

  
  I had bigger expectations on this one. The story is pretty thin, unfocused and uninteresting. The characters makes many dumb decisions which gets radical consequences, and therefore it's hard to get engaged and sympathize. It's hard to determine if this is how drug dealing… More
  I had bigger expectations on this one. The story is pretty thin, unfocused and uninteresting. The characters makes many dumb decisions which gets radical consequences, and therefore it's hard to get engaged and sympathize. It's hard to determine if this is how drug dealing works, but it feels realistic and Catalina Sandino Moreno makes a great impression as the drug mule. Because of it's inability to engage I wouldn't recommend this.

• Daisy M

  
  In a small village in Colombia, the pregnant seventeen years old Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) supports her family with her salary working in a floriculture. She is fired and with a total lack of perspective of finding a new job, she decides to accept the offer to work as a drug… More
  In a small village in Colombia, the pregnant seventeen years old Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) supports her family with her salary working in a floriculture. She is fired and with a total lack of perspective of finding a new job, she decides to accept the offer to work as a drug mule, flying to USA with sixty-two pellets of cocaine in her stomach. Once in New York, things do not happen as planned. <a href="http://s420.photobucket.com/albums/pp286/ladypink_2009/?action=view&current=maria.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i420.photobucket.com/albums/pp286/ladypink_2009/maria.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a> I really liked this movie a lot. It's refreshing to come across a compelling human drama that is told in such an incredibly honest and unexaggerated fashion that it ends up feeling wonderfully real and completely believable. The rather straight forward story only makes the movie feel more convincing. Maria Alvarez, played by previous Catalina Sandino Moreno, is a seventeen year old who falls into the sticky-sweet trap of seeking a quick escape from the hopelessness of her mundane existence. She turns to drugs. Not using them, though - smuggling them. Working as a drug mule offers her the chance at easy money. But, like most young people, she dives into it headlong - without fully realizing the risks and possible deadly consequences. In fact, this movie really is all about young people stumbling over their own poor jugdements. Given all the hype that surrounded this movie, I found it to be not quite as harrowing as I had expected. Perhaps I'm just too jaded. In truth, there were moments where I felt genuinely afraid for Maria. Mostly, though, there was just a real sense of the despair and desperation that fills the lives of these young Colombians. In the spirit of keeping it genuine, all the acting in this movie is right on the mark - all the actors deliver. Of course, Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria) is so graced with natural beauty and she projects such a gentle and humble manner that one can't really help but feel empathy for her character. . The melancholic music throughout this film - with plenty of beautiful acoustic guitar playing and salsa, supports the emotional content of the movie perfectly. Thankfully, it doesn't bang you on the head with "feel sad here", and "feel scared here", and "feel relieved here". It sinks back a bit to find its harmony with the other elements. Nice. The cinematography is beautiful in its simplicity and its understated manner. The word "modest" - in its best sense to describe this movie. In conclusion, this movie teaches us is that it's also not a good idea to be a mule. Actually where I live here in the Caribbean we get this kind of problem as an everyday story, So many mules are coming from Colombia and uses our tiny island to hop for Europe. And it is the poverty that makes these people go to the utmost to risk their lives to do this job.

• Janice :

  
  Most gripping foreign film I have seen in EONS! Amazing debut performance from Catalina Sandino Moreno.

• John A

  
  'Maria Full of Grace' is a film far from the one I expected, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Despite its drama/thriller labelling it is completely ordinary in the exposure of some remarkable, and rather shocking events. By avoiding the cliches and conventions of a… More
  'Maria Full of Grace' is a film far from the one I expected, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Despite its drama/thriller labelling it is completely ordinary in the exposure of some remarkable, and rather shocking events. By avoiding the cliches and conventions of a genre the impact is far stronger. By making the characters, and even the initial setup part of normality, empathising is all the more easier, and dramatic. In an Oscar nominated performance, Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a stubborn but spirited seventeen year old living in rural Colombia with her mother, grandmother and sister, who has just given birth. She brings in money by stripping the thorns off roses, but it is tiresome and monotonous work. When Maria falls pregnant and her boss is unsympathetic, she quits. But her family rely on her for money. By pure luck, she meets a man who offers her work as a 'mule', transporting drugs to America by swallowing them. One of the film's most impressive attributes is the astonishing attention to detail in revealing this process. The audience watch intently as Maria must learn to swallow over 50 pellets of cocaine, and we learn the dire conseqeunces of a lost capsule - or in worst case scenario, a ruptured one. The direction is of the understated style rather than flashy or elaborate. It is simple, unobtrusive, but effective in hitting home the tension of a whole different world that Maria, unfortunately, chooses to live. She is a victim, but willingly entered into her contract, and the shady outlines of good and evil in the screenplay enhance the film's realistic approach. Moreno's performance is definitely the heart of the picture. Maria is a teenage as stubborn as any other, but the fear in her realisation of a horrifying underground world is expertly conveyed. She is bound to break under the pressure. The cast are uniformly good, but Moreno is a standout. If the film has faults, they are limited to some narrative tangents that don't make for a cohesive picture. While the process of transporting the drugs is meticulously unveiled Maria is a bit too quick in finding her feet and rebelling against her boss, and her pregnancy is given less focus than it deserves - it could have made for a pivotal emotional persuasion for Maria. None of those are major flaws, I'm merely commenting that 'Maria' isn't a perfect film. It is still a marvellously well acted and sensitively shot tale of the risks people expose themselves to in hard times. The characters are realistic, and the balance of powers fair. 'Maria Full of Grace' is affecting and powerful in its portrayal of a woman who makes mistakes, but desperately wants to do good.

• Sunil J

  
  Amazing film with an amazing performance by Catalina Sandino Moreno.

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