“Olmos was just coming off an Oscar-nominated performance in Stand and Deliver, and now he was making a movie about a world I knew intimately,” Danny Trejo shared in his memoir, “Trejo: My Life of Crime, Hollywood, and Redemption” (2021).”But my initial excitement quickly changed to dismay. Ten pages in, I knew there were going to be problems.”  The film contained certain scenarios, ethics, and behaviors that weren’t characteristic of La Eme — a sector of the mafia that the film loosely depicts. 

Trejo maintained a correspondence with his former mafia associate and pleaded with him to keep retaliation out of the equation. He also warned Edward James Olmos of threats coming from agents of the mafia, but the actor turned director was already married to the idea of preserving his script. The tragic and barbaric events to follow now stand as a cautionary tale to cinematic storytellers opting to explore the remorseless world of Mexican crime factions (via GQ).