The film was directed by Ben Bolt and Harold Becker (uncredited) and it stars Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and Tommy Lee Jones.

He later gets mixed-up in a revenge scheme cooked up by Lorry Dane, the embittered stripper wife of strip-joint owner George Cole.

Before he knows what's happened, Cullen is embroiled in two torrid romances: one with Dane and the other with nice girl Aggie Donaldson.

[7] Ransohoff had previously made The Hustler, about pool sharks, and The Cincinnati Kid, about poker; The Arm was about dice.

Ransohoff said, "I made The Cincinnati Kid 20 years ago, and I was amused at the possibility of filling in a third - pool, poker and craps, they're sort of the three major areas of table gambling.

Bolt was a suggestion of Columbia's new head of production, David Puttnam, who had started his job after the film had been greenlit.

[8] Filming finished several weeks later than originally intended, meaning Diane Lane (who previously co-starred with Matt Dillon in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish) had to miss out on a theatre job she had lined up.

[10][11][12] The Los Angeles Times said the film "is so entertaining, so true to its period that it's easy to peg it as another '50s nostalgia piece when it actually possesses the kind of complexity usually associated with less commercial, less starry productions.