The movie features none other than Edward Norton as Dennis Hopper's alter ego in his criminal persona. On set, Michael Mann explained how this role came about:

In fact, one of the reasons we decided to make this film was because we couldn't find anybody else who could really portray Dennis Hopper's evil character in a cinematic way. So we went back and looked at everybody we knew that had portrayed Dennis Hopper's evil character in a cinematic way and nobody else came close to doing it in