Trivia

The Pittsburgh Police badges are plastic resin casts of actual Pittsburgh PD badges. The props crew was given four badges to use, and thus all of the badges are one of only four numbers. This was done with the agreement that all casts and molds had to be returned to Pittsburgh PD so they could be destroyed once filming was completed.

When shooting their scenes as father and son, John Mahoney found himself without Bruce Willis when it came time to shoot his close ups as they had to play off each other. Mahoney had to shoot them with the script supervisor taking Willis' place.

On an appearance in May 2004 on "On the Record with Bob Costas (2001)," Bruce Willis apologized to the movie-going public for this film, saying that "it sucked," which is what Bruce Willis has typically done: say how terrific a film is when it's released, but then speak poorly of it later. He also said the same about Die Hard 2, 3, and 4 and Hudson Hawk.

Originally, the lead role was to be played by Ed Harris. It was then rewritten for Robert De Niro and, finally, Bruce Willis.

The movie was filmed in 13 weeks in the summer of 1992 in Pittsburgh. Its working title was "Three Rivers." It was scheduled to be released on May 21, 1993, but after the original cut was shown to a test audience that hated it, extensive re-shooting was done in Los Angeles. Story changes and the removal of some plot points were done to make the movie better. Because of this, the release date was pushed from the original May date to September 17, 1993. According to articles and reports at the time, the test audience hated the initial cut of the film because of confusing parts of the story, parts which were added into director Rowdy Herrington's and Marty Kaplan's original script by Bruce Willis. One source mentioned how the original cut was like "Hudson Hawk (1991) without the laughs." One of the veteran production members said that Willis "called the shots like he did on (Hudson) Hawk, and like he used to do on Moonlighting (1985). He had scenes rewritten. He did what he wanted to do. We were working with Orson Willis." When news about re-shoots were reported, Columbia chairman Mark Canton said in interview that he "couldn't be more enthusiastic" about the film and predicted its being a "beyond-sizable hit." But to do so, the movie had to make $30 million plus to turn a profit at the box-office. Canton was known for being heavily involved in several other films in earlier years which were known for having had very troubled productions and for receiving bad receptions from audiences during test screenings. (Some of them include Wes Craven's sci-fi horror Deadly Friend (1986), one of Willis's earlier box-office flops The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), and John McTiernan's Last Action Hero (1993).) Just like he did with this film, Canton also had kept from the public the news and rumors about problems on the sets of those films and about bad responses from test audiences and demanded heavy changes be done on the films, which only ended up hurting the films and studios more. In Striking Distance, for example, all the love/intimate scenes between Hardy and Jo were re-shot to make them sexier. Several dialogue scenes, like the scene in the bar between Hardy and Detillo, were also cut to make the film quicker paced. The change in tone of the film also made Columbia change the title from "Three Rivers" to "Striking Distance", as it now focused more on the action/thriller elements. Although it was his interference in the script and huge ego during filming that were the cause of problems with the production and the original cut, Bruce Willis was still very angry because he had to return for re-shoots. He was so angry that he blamed Herrington for it, despite the fact that Herrington still defended Willis in interviews regarding the problems with the film. According to the cast and crew, Willis treated Herrington very badly during both initial filming and re-shoots. Striking Distance ended up being a box-office failure, earning only $24 million on the budget of $30 million.