At the start of the 1960s, Richard Nixon lost a presidential election to John F. Kennedy. Not told as often, and rarely in any significant detail is the story of what happened immediately after. Exhausted from the grueling campaign, the candidates took a back seat while their party leaders battled it out on the national stage. Allegations of fraud, handshake deals made in smokey back rooms- fifteen years after the end of World War II, the United States of America takes its first shaky steps into an uncertain future.

Released from prison, an aging criminal mastermind (Sam Jaffe) gathers a team of small-timers, including “hooligan” Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), a safecracker (Anthony Caruso) and a crooked lawyer (Louis Calhern). The heist goes off without a hitch until someone catches a stray bullet and the gang finds themselves entangled in a web of deceit and murder…