Visually the film hints at the future stylization of Wong's films. Cinematographer Lau Wai-Keung, also known as Andrew Lau, later worked on Chunking Express. Much of the visual influence here is Sam Peckinpah by way of John Woo, with a slow motion bullet ballet. The music used was contemporary 1988 Canto-pop, featuring a Chinese language version of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

There was a shock in seeing Maggie Cheung look almost embryonic. She was 24 at the time, with several films to her credit. She looks not quite formed, her face appearing like a blank slate yet to be better defined by the roles about to come her way. At 27, Andy Lau was still somewhat babyfaced, and sometimes looked too delicate to be a street hood.

1988, the year that the Scorsese influenced Tears was released, was also when one of Martin Scorsese's most personal projects, The Last Temptation of Christ his theaters. While it is something of a generalization, one could argue that Scorsese, who has mentioned John Cassavetes as an influence, would make films that tended to be less personal and more stylistically classical in his films following that date. Conversely, Wong took up Cassavetes' mantle to make films with greater degrees of improvisation and less regard to the traditional narrative.