"Sam was already on this project when it came to us," says producer Andras Hamori, whose recent credits include Istvan Szabo's Sunshine and David Cronenberg's Crash. "He’s the one who brought it to us and remained with it for almost five years. His is not one of these courtesy or vanity credits as some actors have: this is a real producer credit."

Samuel L Jackson as Elmo McElroy & Robert Carlyle as Felix DeSouza

It was also Jackson who suggested Hong Kong legend Ronny Yu to direct The 51st State. "I’m a huge Hong Kong film fan and had watched a lot of Ronny’s stuff," says the actor/producer. "I’m particularly infatuated with The Bride With White Hair. We sat down and talked it through. He has this great sense of humour and style in terms of action. You can see from his previous films that this is the perfect action comedy for him and he was born to do it."

The 51st State was shot towards the end of last year as a Canadian/UK co-production linking Alliance Atlantis and UK lottery franchise company, The Film Consortium. In addition to Carlyle, who was the first to sign up after Jackson, the cast includes local Liverpool icon Ricky Tomlinson (best known to UK televiewers as the patriarch of the Royle Family and to art-house audiences as the star of Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff) - as the drug baron. On Carlyle’s recommendation, Yu took a look at Riff-Raff. "I thought Ricky was hysterical in it," he says. "We told him he could have any part he wanted in the film."

An equally inspired piece of casting was rock star and occasional actor Meatloaf, who plays The Lizard, a white dude with a bad skin condition who talks like he’s a homeboy. "It was like double take in a movie," notes Hamori. "We were walking along and talking about casting The Lizard and, as I passed this bookstore, I suddenly stopped and turned around. There was this book in the window, ‘Back from Hell’, with Meatloaf’s picture on the cover. He was larger than life. He was The Lizard."

Director Yu brought a combination of craft and meticulous preparation to the film’s stunt scenes, including the one in which McElroy, the American in Britain, persists on driving the Jaguar down the wrong side of the street - well, it’s the right side for him - in the centre of Liverpool. But, points out Hamori, it wasn’t just a stunt: it was a crucial part of the film.