The idea of a woman joining the mafia is interesting. We normally see movies that center on male characters that do that and often their actions are cliche where as a woman could introduce a fresh take on the way in which she joins the mafia and what is done in the process.

Why did she decide to use the mafia to rebel?
Would be great to see in the logline an event that spurred her on to join the mafia. An event that pushed her to have to join the mafia in order to achieve a difficult goal.

“only to have her irresponsible behavior put her in the middle of a decade-old power struggle…” is redundant if she joins the mafia she will be put in the middle of something bad one way or another, message being: crime is bad.

If you could make her joining the mafia personal somehow then the story becomes even more interesting. Is there an injustice she is trying to fix? Or a wrong she is trying to make up for?

The audience can then invest in her emotionally because she isn’t doing it just for money or power.

This idea sounds like it has lots of potential, look forward to reading further drafts of the logline.

Hope this helps.

“The theme or relevance of a narrative is only revealed at the end.” Is a dangerous approach, think of it this way; why would an audience member stay to watch until the end?

As appose to your thinking from the point of view that you know how it ends and what the relevance is think of it as someone that doesn’t know the end or the relevance. For them to want to keep on watching they would need to understand the relevance throughout the story.

Your device to tell the story is a retrospect via flash backs and as you said “…the larger story is an action-adventure movie.”
This means that your audience will empathize with the MC and emotionally invest in the story’s action during the adventure portion. I think this means that the suspense from the ticking time bomb of the death sentence will be diffused and have little if any effect on the audience.

To me as for others on this thread the strong female gang leader sounds interesting where as the elements from the framing story sound less interesting. As the action-adventure will constitute the majority of your film perhaps best to focus on that. Just as “Saving Private Ryan”, “Forrest Gump”, “Titanic” and even the book “In Cold Blood” are often described via the main action of the central story not the framing device of a retrospect telling of it.

We all know what you think about Hollywood films but for purpose of illustrating this point these films are good examples regardless where they were made.

If your trying to explain to someone working on your film in either a logline or synopsis what it is about this would likely be a more accurate approach.