Pity poor Joe Rolfe (John Payne). The hard-luck WWII veteran is trying to walk the straight and narrow, but winds up playing the patsy in a devilishly conceived million-dollar armored car robbery. Getting no help from the cops, he desperately trails the thieves south of the border. There he tangles with tough guys Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef, who are as deep in the dark as he is, and falls for good girl Coleen Gray—under the suspicious eye of her cop father (Preston Foster). The was the first production pairing of noir dream team Payne and director Phil Karlson (99 RIVER STREET), under the no-nonsense auspices of producer Edward Small. It remains one of the great capers of the 1950s.