There's been some controversy over "Pawn Shop," a pro-ICE thriller from Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire in which Danny Trejo stars alongside Harvey Keitel.
It all started when passersby noticed the cast and crew shooting a scene that appeared to recreate the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good. It escalated further when production was shut down in Livingston, Montana, after numerous protests and complaints. Shapiro called the shutdown "content discrimination" and a First Amendment violation, and filming resumed Monday.
Through all of it, Trejo stayed quiet, until now.
"I am a proud Mexican who has always been and will always be a supporter of my community. I am also obviously pro-immigrant. I am not pro-ICE," Trejo said in a statement. "I know where I come from and I know our struggles. I am an actor. My job is to tell a story."
Trejo insists that he joined the film because the role appealed to him as a positive depiction of a Latino veteran.
Trejo obviously didn’t stumble into a Daily Wire movie by accident. The logline doesn't hide anything. The ICE officer is the hero, the protesters are a "furious mob," and the film tackles "the rule of law" against "chaos." Any actor with Trejo's 40+ years in the business reads the script, knows who's financing it, and understands what he's making.
That said, Trejo shouldn't even have to make a statement. He's not pro-ICE? Fine. He loves the character he's playing? Perfect. Both things can be true. The man is 82; you can only play Machete so many times before you age out, the roles dry up, and the next thing you know, you're in a Ben Shapiro movie.
I briefly mentioned Ben Affleck's "Animals" yesterday, but I need to get more into it, because this thing, now streaming on Netflix, is one of the most baffling efforts I've seen from a serious director in a long time.