- Box Office Bomb: Budget, $50 million. Box office, $38.5 million. This Vanity Project was the first and last film directed by Steven Seagal (barring some alleged uncredited work on a few DVD films). This film was part of a series of blows that, along with The Patriot and Fire Down Below, knocked out Seagal's action star career in Hollywood and sent him packing to direct-to-DVD shelves.
- Copiously Credited Creator: Starring, directed by and co-produced by Steven Seagal.
- Creator Killer: This was the first film directed by Steven Seagal, and its terrible reviews and underwhelming box-office performance ensured that he would never get the chance to direct a second.note
- Creator's Favorite: At the Fan Expo Canada
Steven Seagal cited this as well as Fire Down Below as his favorite movies he starred in. - The Danza:
- Michael Caine plays Michael Jennings.
- Mike Starr as Big Mike.
- Deleted Role/Role-Ending Misdemeanor: When Danish stuntman and actor Sven-Ole Thorsen met Steven Seagal on the set, he was asked by Seagal to kick him to show what Sven-Ole was capable of. Sven-Ole hesitantly kicked Seagal, who caught his leg and threw him to the ground. Seagal asked Sven-Ole to kick him again, giving it his best shot. Sven-Ole kicked him as fast and hard as he could and Seagal fell to the ground. When shooting a scene together a day or two later, Seagal hit Sven-Ole in the throat, resulting in Sven-Ole being knocked out for three or four seconds. It looked so realistic, that Seagal decided that Sven-Ole's character, Otto, died, and Sven-Ole's remaining scenes were cut from the film.
- Executive Meddling: A positive example — Steven Seagal filmed almost 40 minutes' worth of footage for the environmental message he delivers at the end of the film and was going to use all 40 minutes in the final cut. The combination of pressure from Warner Brothers and a disastrous preview screening (audiences members were booing, laughing, and making obscene gestures for the entire sequence) led Seagal to cut the final scene down to around 7 minutes.
- Fake American: Michael Caine. In reality, he's British.
- Fake Nationality: Joan Chen as an Inuit. In reality, she's Chinese.
- Money, Dear Boy: The only possible reason that Michael Caine appeared in this film. And it is - around that time, he couldn't find many opportunities for work so he took what he could. Also the only possible reason they could have gotten R. Lee Ermey to be a moron here. And Joan Chen must have needed some money too...
- Star-Derailing Role: Steven Seagal had risen to A-list status with Under Siege two years prior, but this film quickly put an end to that. The somewhat successful Under Siege 2 the next year ensured that his career wasn't completely killed, and he carried on making middle-tier action films until The Patriot all but finished him as a major action star.
- Troubled Production: Steven Seagal insisted that he get to direct this movie and studio executives, against their better judgement, acquiesced. Seagal's inexperience and lack of interest in the finer details of what a director does resulted in the production budget going out of control. Fortunately for the studio, there was a clause in Seagal's contract that stipulated that unapproved budget overruns would come out of his salary. Unfortunately for Seagal, the overages quickly rose up to equal his entire paycheck. He ended up appearing in Executive Decision in exchange for the studio forgiving the debt he owed.
- Uncredited Role:
- David S. Goyer did uncredited rewrites on the script, mainly reworking Michael Caine's dialogue.
- An uncredited Louise Fletcher plays the bartender.
- What Could Have Been:
- Michael Caine pulled the short straw for being the villain. Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, and Alan Rickman were also sought for the role. Irons was actually cast as Jennings at first before Caine replaced him.
- Henry Rollins was considered for MacGruder.
- Working Title: Rainbow Warrior and Spirit Warrior.
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