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List Price: $19.98Amazon.com's Price: $14.99 You Save: $4.99 (25%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783114842
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783114842
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 07, 2004
Running Time: 101 minutes
Sales Rank: 6835
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
Editorial Review:
Description:
(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.
Amazon.com:
When a movie can blend passionate social concern with good old-fashioned suspense, it must be doing something right. Maria Full of Grace scores high on both counts. Maria is a Colombian teenager who, for a large paycheck, agrees to be a mule for drug-runners: she has to swallow dozens of thumb-sized capsules of heroin and smuggle them into New York. This debilitating process is painstakingly described, and of course not everything goes as planned when Maria and her fellow mules land in America. Director Joshua Marston is working on a low budget, which explains the film's narrow, single-minded focus--but this may be a strength, not a weakness. The trump card is the lead performance of Catalina Sandrino Moreno, who won awards at the Seattle and Newport Film Festivals. Her empathetic face carries us along on Maria's journey, and humanizes a problem that is too easily relegated to a headline. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Sometimes reality is the toughest pill to swallow...
I got into a heated debate with a friend the other day about the difference between subtlety and lifelessness. He got all up in arms when I labeled Ed Harris's nomination for `The Truman Show' a joke. Now as many of you know, I love the movie, but I felt that Harris really added nothing to the film. He was less subtle and more hollow. So, when he said that I wouldn't appreciate subtleness if it hit me in the face I rattled off this little film and told him to bask in the glory that is Catalina ... Read More
Rating: - Making Human Beings into Drug Mules
A drug mule is a human being who agrees to, or is coerced into swallowing a large number of latex drug pellets filled with cocaine in order to smuggle the illicit narcotics into the United States. The movie tells how a group of women out of desperation become mules. It is a degrading, deeply dehumanizing, dangerous thing to do. If a pellet ruptures and the drugs get loose in the body, they can easily cause death. This small indie movie makes this experience human, tragic, and intimate to moviegoers. ... Read More
Rating: - Wonderful film!!
Wonderful movie with a great story that also sparked my husband and I to learn more about drug mules. Catalina Sandino Moreno does a WONDERFUL job as Maria. I speak Spanish but my husband does not, and he enjoyed watching it with subtitles, something he normally does not do. I speak "Spain Spanish" but have also worked with people from Columbia, Ecuador, Cuba, and Honduras.. if I hadn't worked with people from rural areas, I think it would have been hard for me to understand the dialects used. It's definitely ... Read More
Rating: - An Indictment of More Than Drug Smugglers
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent, excellent
The plot seems no more than a mosaic of real life situations, the conclusion driven by most basic motives, known to be used since ancient Greek drama. The performance of Jaime Osorio Gomez as Javier is outstanding. With a short appearance he manages to dash the essence of the Latin American way: a continent brought to stress by forces too powerful to control has developed a societal and moral codex to live within. And we want Maria to stay in America, the land of the brave. The system works :).
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