Carlos is played by Danny Quinn ,son of Anthony Quinn , while Nikki was played by a rather young Lauren Holly. The two were actually married in real life in 1991. Her very public 1994 divorce included accusations of abuse and had him claiming that her careless spending squandered their fortune and her accusing him of infidelity and refusing to work. A few months later she met Jim Carrey on the set of Dumb and Dumber (1994) and they were secretly wed for a total of ten months.
The film was released in theaters but only after it failed to air as a pilot for a network television series.
Michael Carmine, who played Ruben, also appeared on Miami Vice (1984) as Snake. Carmine was a respected actor and his sudden death from heart failure at the age of 30 shocked the acting community in 1989.
The producers worked out a unique deal with Miami Beach officials ensuring that when shooting was completed, the production would leave the area--i.e., the repainted and refurbished exteriors of Art Deco homes, the park, and various other structures--in an infinitely better condition than when they first began to work there. As a result, there was a playground built that was fully landscaped on Collins Avenue at 2nd Street in the south end of South Miami Beach.
The destruction of the cocaine processing factory by the Band required three contingents of firemen, hundreds of extras, eight Doberman pinschers and their assorted trainers, dozens of stunt men and the invention and precision of a team of special effects personnel so that the Band became the heroes that executive producer Michael Mann so specifically describes. The climax was shot over a series of five consecutive nights.