Disney were planning on giving the film a wide release, but upon seeing the highly-charged, interracial sex scene between Laurence Fishburne and Ellen Barkin's characters, the brass feared it would be too controversial and only released the film in 300 theaters.
Writer Ross Thomas came up with the idea for the script based on his military experiences about decommissioned soldiers used in the private sector doing various different "black bag" operations such as, for example, the Iran/Contra scandal.
Laurence Fishburne shot his scenes on weekdays as he was also concurrently working on Higher Learning (1995) at the time.
The first actor to take on the film was Laurence Fishburne, who had been considered for the Zeus Carver role in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) but took way too long to make his decision to join that film and hired Samuel L. Jackson to play the part.
Director Damian Harris considers the film to be a film noir version of Dangerous Liaisons because the action of the film is the dialog.