One of three movies featuring Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. The movies are La loi criminelle (1988), JFK (1991), and Meurtre à Alcatraz (1995).
The film's opening prologue cites a famous quotation from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The quote reads: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." A year later, Abyss (1989) opened with just the second part of the same quote.
Was screened at the Festival of Festivals in Toronto on September 15, 1988 and then later shown in 1,160 theaters for its domestic US release during the following Spring.