This gripping Colombian film, written and directed by Joshua Marston, follows the desperate plunge of Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) from a dead-end job as an assembly-line worker in a Colombian flower factory into the drug-smuggling underworld. Maria's journey from Bogotá to New York in a plane with three other smugglers is one of the tensest flights ever filmed. "Maria Full of Grace" sustains a documentary authenticity that is as astonishing as it is offhand. Even when you're on the edge of your seat, it never sacrifices a calm, clear-sighted humanity for the sake of melodrama or cheap moralizing. Even the airport interrogators aren't monsters, just everyday officials efficiently carrying out their duties. | 
