Director Stewart Raffill once said of working with James Coburn on this movie that Coburn was "one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He was terribly beat up with arthritis at the time and had to be lifted onto a horse . . . [but ]he was interested in all sorts of esoteric philosophies and things."
Director Stewart Raffill spoke of how this movie came about: "A producer came to me and said I like your movie [La Liberté sauvage (1975)]. He said, 'I have the money to make a movie, but we have to get started in three weeks'."
Bruce Davison and James Brolin actually crossed the very narrow and wobbly rope footbridge (with safety harnesses) suspended across a 200-foot-deep gorge seen in one of the action sequences. However, stunt doubles took over when the two fall off the bridge as it collapses.
Director Stewart Raffill once said of this picture: "There are a lot of fun and light moments in 'High Risk'. I see the film being in the [Butch Cassidy et le Kid (1969)] mold. There's humor, but the dangers, and the bullets, are real. Our heroes are not really competent enough to do what they do. They're working-class guys who gamble their all on a chance to make it rich, and as such, I feel that they will be that much more easily identifiable to out audiences. They are simply doing what we would all like to do - have an adventure that would make our dreams become reality."
Most of this movie was set in Colombia, but filmed in Mexico.