The story is a crime drama, a robbery that despite meticulous planning goes awry. In this, it is similar to The Asphalt Jungle, which also starred Sterling Hayden. Since he is older, Hayden's role has changed from enforcer to organizer. The target is a racetrack, to be robbed during the seventh race. Diversions are created by a strongman (Joseph Turkel) and a sniper (Timothy Carey), while corrupt track employees (Elisha Cook Jr. and Mike O'Reilly) provide Hayden entrance to where the money's kept. The problem is, Cook has confessed the plan to his adulterous, cynically ambitious wife (Marie Windsor) whose lover (Vince Edwards) is equally ruthless.
Turkel and Carey would show up as French soldiers in Kubrick's next project, Paths of Glory. Hayden's semicomic bluster would land him the role of the general obsessed with bodily fluids in Kubrick's best film, Dr. Strangelove.
The moral adheres to the Production Code in that crime doesn't pay, with the plotters all reaching their due comeuppance. It does seem unlikely that everyone in the payout room gets shot dead, except Cook, who must live long enough to ensure his wife is also duly punished.
Cook, who also played a paranoid, lovesick, two-timed man in The Big Sleep, may give the best performance, but Windsor and Carey are also memorable. Edwards, whose character is such a snake here, later became famous as good-guy doctor Ben Casey on television.