Most actors’ own lives seem sedate in comparison to the characters they portray. The same can’t be said for Danny Trejo. Before breaking into Hollywood as a consultant on the set of 1985 crime thriller Runaway Train, later carving out a niche for himself as Robert Rodriguez’s favourite grizzled badass with roles in Machete and From Dusk Till Dawn, Trejo was a John Wayne-obsessed kid growing up in the “murder capital of Los Angeles”. Then he was a teenage heroin addict, then a stick-up artist, then a prison inmate, prize fighter, drug counsellor and, eventually, movie star. It’s a lot to pack into a two-hour documentary, but Canadian director Brett Harvey manages to squeeze it all into the fascinating Inmate #1 – a film that benefits from confessional, charismatic interviews with its subject, but leaves big questions about the world around him unexplored.
Inmate #1 has an abundance of great Trejo anecdotes to fill its running time.
Shot in locations that have defined the star’s life, Inmate #1 has an abundance of great Trejo anecdotes to fill its running time, from tales of robbing electronics stores with hand grenades while high on heroin to the time he re-enacted The Wizard Of Oz in full from a shit-smeared cell in solitary at the famous San Quentin jail. Harvey wisely gives these hair-raising stories plenty of room to bloom, keeping his camera trained on Trejo’s world-weary expression as he recounts dark days. The star’s friends and family help fill in the gaps where needed, offering insights that often prove powerful – especially when discussing the star’s beloved Uncle Gilbert, who Danny idolised as a child, but who fell into a life of crime (Trejo’s account of being forced to help his uncle inject heroin packs a punch heavier than any thrown in the action star’s movies).
But the film flirts with ideas that are brushed away too quickly. “In my neighbourhood, you could either be a labourer or a criminal. You didn’t see a lot of Mexican lawyers or doctors,” says Trejo early on, but the movie resists any larger insights about the systemic failings of America that force members of Latin-American communities like Trejo’s into patterns of crime and substance abuse. What’s left instead is a personal portrait of a man with a remarkable redemption story. Like Trejo himself, Inmate #1 is muscular and mesmerising.