The scene with the tourist boat on the Amsterdam canals is a shot-for-shot homage to the exact same scene in the Dutch thriller Amsterdamned (1988), down to the nuns. The director of Amsterdamned, Dick Maas, is one of the passengers.
First starring role of world champion K1 Rico Verhoeven, after many supporting roles in movies and series, and also his first producer credit. In that capacity, he was able to situate a large portion of the movie in his native Netherlands, and cast Frank Grillo as the antagonist. For the story, he was inspired by one of his favorite movies, Man on Fire (2004).