The first 22 minutes of the movie were released as part one of a five-part series through VODO under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative License in July 2011. The movie was the most downloaded file on Earth for nearly two weeks, was subtitled into forty languages and, by August 5th, 2011, it was claimed by VODO and TorrentFreak as having reached 1 million downloads.
The six-story Spanish portico was built during filming of The Longest Yard (2005). It's used prominently in the films climactic final scene.
The production used the largest collection of tumbleweeds ever assembled for a motion picture; over 357 tumbleweeds were collected for use throughout the film.
Dzerzhinsky, the surname of the KGB agent, is the same as Felix Dzerzhinsky, who founded the predecessor of the KGB, the Cheka, following the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Cheka was highly feared due to their use of torture and summary executions.
Michael Wincott had to say that the two central characters are both struggling with the same issue, which is the problem of being true to one's inherent ethical core when one's job is to be a pawn for a bureaucracy.