law enforcement agencies -- the federal narcotics people, FBI, etc. What I'm trying to get back to the press is that it all relates back to narcotics. Nolte concurred: This film is kind of about the drug wars. Walter and I wanted to do a story about the distribution of drugs, not in the city, but across the border. There's two points of view about this drug situation in America. One is educational, and the other has to do with the prevalence of drugs, the availability of them. Being a child out of the '60s, I was very much involved in drugs. If you wanted to be part of the subculture in the '60s, you had to seek out your drugs. It's different today. Kids don't have a chance. They're confronted by drugs on every block ... It sounds hypocritical, I know, but there's not so much hypocrisy being a child of the '60s and having to make this kind of change because we come from a generation that accepts change. The role of Nolte's antagonist was played by another actor who had worked with Hill before, Powers Boothe. Boothe: Every movie Walter's ever made is a western – it's just that people don't know it. Thematically, men standing up for themselves and making their way in the world is a theme that's been in movies throughout the world. But it's particularly an American genre, and it has to do, in my mind, with the development of our nation: you can do anything you're strong enough to do; right is right, and wrong is wrong. And at least in the movies, right wins out. Shooting Walter Hill had worked with Sam Peckinpah in the early 1970s on The Getaway and said he "tipped my hat to Sam a couple of times" in the film. Michael Ironside later recalled that the film was greatly cut in post production: Andy Robinson and I play CIA agents, we're trying to do this whole covert op, and my character was the go-between between the military side of the story, the police side of the story, and the government side of the story. But when they put it all together, Walter [Hill] said to me, "It looks like it's starring Michael Ironside, with Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, and Rip Torn supporting him, so we're gonna cut the whole Andy Robinson side of the film out."