Oscar: I appreciate your astute and well informed comments on the movie. I'm not sure from the way you present them if you're critiquing my review or only adding your own personal views on the movie using quotes from me as starting points. But you do clearly disagree with me at several points, so I'll reply.

To begin with, what I said about Maria Full of Grace is just my opinion and you don't have to agree with me. I didn't expect you to, since I sensed your prior disposition to be strongly in its favor, while I believe I approached it (and continue to) in a more neutral mode.

Obviously I think the movie is well done, the acting good, and despite the familiar topic, the point of view original. Much of what I said that may seem to you unfair I stated as correctives to many reviews I saw already in print that seemed to me somewhat excessive in their praise. I'm sure that as years go by this will seem a good little film, but not quite the exemplary effort they're describing.

You'll have to tell me why, if Maria is like half the Columbian women you see in Miami, Marston viewed 800 candidates before he picked that one. And to answer that question about how Maria becomes exemplary and how the actress is special, you may want to ask Marston.

As for the religous element and the idealization of Lucy and Maria herself that I spoke of, how a movie, especially an independent one, is titled and represented in posters is an important clue to how the filmmakers want it to be seen, and you seem to overlook the way Maria and Lucy are repeatedly presented in visual images that resemble portraits of Madonnas or Mona LIsas.

If Marston had not wanted to idealize Maria, he would have chosen the more ordinary Carla to be the central woman.

I don't get the point of your response to my comparison to Midnight Express. Of course Maria had other options than to do what she did. What is different is that Billy Hayes wasn't under pressure of economic necessities. That's all I'm saying. Your comments only bear that distinction out. And while Maria got free, even after a struggle with the local New York drug heavies and running off with Carla with the drugs, Billy spent gruelling, life-threatening years in a Turkish prison. Is that worse than becoming a house maid who may get another job when she learns good enough English? You be the judge. It's apples and oranges, really; there are key distinctions between the two cases, but drug smuggling is a terribly dangerous thing to get involved in. I brought up Midnight Express because though some think it's too sensational, it's nonetheless true, and I think it tells a more complex and involving story.

You seem to denigrate the director in favor of his "star," which I think is going overboard in another way. Most reviews have praised the movie itself, and I think justifiably. Marston is responsible for its being made. And I don't at all agree with you that Marston's ego is as large as Chaw says. Chaw is going overboard. There's nothing in his interviews to make Marston look like an egomaniac or a jerk. He''s an ambitous young man who takes himself a bit too seriously, that's all.

Marston certainly didn't consciously set out to make drug running okay, but as I said, in the movie it's the path to a better life for Maria. Why you use this as an opportunity to "heap praise" on David Gordon Green escapes me. I don't share your enthusiasm for Green or care who has the best sized ego anyway, but Green has shown more evidence of a distinctive style and had more opportnities to do so. I don't think the situation is ripe for a comparison of the two directors, not yet, anyway.

There's no way of knowing for sure, but from reports, Sandino was not the only one who contributed to dialogue rewriting, and therefore I'd say she's getting credit enough.

I'm not qualified to evaluate the subtitles but experience with subtitling of other languages suggests that it's often wise not to be literal, and that professional subtitlers know their trade very well, and when they make choices that we wouldn't, they have good reason. "Imbecil," "fuck you," is only one example.
I can't comment on the ultrasound either, but there are numerous points that strain credulity. Some however turn out to be true to life according to interviews -- for example the New York police collaborating with Don Fernando to immediately locate the bodies of mules who have perished on the way to New York. What I'm more sceptical about is the custom's officers' leniency with Maria when she's so suspicious, though statements by the real "Don Fernando" Orlando Tobon suggest police can be sympathetic to the plight of the drug mules, at least after the fact.