“Miss Bala” (*** out of four) was a strikingly told remake of the 2011 Mexican thriller about a woman (Gina Rodriguez) who aims to take down a Mexican drug cartel after they kidnap her friend but finds herself in the neck-deep crossfire of dangerous border relations and underworld crime in which she questions her identity and both the large-and-small scale operations at hand and how this will affect both Mexico and the U.S. Imperfect, with grand aspirations that are beyond its reach, but still engrossing and well-told and (most importantly) never stops moving. Rodriguez fiercely holds the film together in the lead and action sequences are nail-biting. A feverish change-of-pace for director Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”, “Thirteen”) but this turns out to be one of her best films.