A telephone repairman in Los Angeles uses his knowledge of electronics to help a bookie set up a betting operation. After the bookie is murdered, the greedy technician takes over his business. He ruthlessly climbs his way to the top of the local crime syndicate, but then gangsters from a big East Coast mob show up wanting a piece of his action.
Gamblers who "took" an out-of-town sucker in a crooked poker game feel shadowy vengeance closing in on them.
Jackie Cogan is an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.
A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
A charming racketeer seduces the DA's stepdaughter for revenge, then falls in love.
Set in 1929, a political boss and his advisor have a parting of the ways when they both fall for the same woman.
A voluptuous black woman takes a job as a high-class prostitute in order to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend.
Fed up with her small-town marriage, a woman goes after the big time and gets mixed up with the mob.
In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, the lookout. Though the local police have taken bribes and left the brothers alone, a violent war erupts when a sadistic lawman from Chicago arrives and tries to shut down the Bondurants operation.
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
After Police Captain Dan McLaren becomes police commissioner, former detective Johnny Blake publicly punches him, convincing rackets boss Al Kruger that Blake is sincere in his effort to join the mob. "Bugs" Fenner, meanwhile, is certain that Blake is a police agent.
Career criminal Youngblood Priest wants out of the Atlanta drug scene, but as he ramps up sales, one little slip up threatens to bring the whole operation down before he can make his exit.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
A hugely successful DA goes into private practice after sending a man to the chair -- only to find out later he was innocent. Now the drunken attorney only seems to represent criminals and low lifes.
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?
A hit man and his partner try to find out why their latest victim, a former race-car driver, did not try to get away.
It was an ingenious enough plan: rob the Riviera Casino's count room during an Elvis impersonator convention. But Thomas Murphy decided to keep all the money for himself and shot all his partners, including recently-freed ex-con Michael Zane. With $3.2 million at stake, the Marshals Service closing in, Michael must track down Murphy.
Chili Palmer is a Miami mobster who gets sent to L.A. to collect a bad debt from Harry Zimm, a Hollywood producer who specializes in cheesy horror films. When Chili meets Harry's leading lady, the romantic sparks fly. After pitching his own life story as a movie idea, Chili learns that being a mobster and being a Hollywood producer really aren't all that different.
Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.
