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A frightened teenage girl is trapped in a sleazy, New Jersey hotel room with two nasty drug dealers. When her chance comes, she takes it—she runs. In a normal movie, the girl would eventually turn the tables on her pursuers, capturing or killing them and emerging victorious, but not here.
In this debut film, Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a drug mule who must swallow more than 60 latex-wrapped heroin capsules and travel from Colombia to the U.S. without losing her cool or getting caught. Moreover, if even one of the capsules breaks or dissolves inside her, she will die.
Marston sidesteps all possible genre conventions and avoids allusions to the bigger picture, in which rich, spoiled Americans enjoy the fruits of Maria's labor. Mostly he allows the extraordinary Moreno, also making her debut, to carry all the uncertainty, terror and pain on her own young, striking shoulders.