Powerful but unethical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker coerces unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician.
After leaving his U.S. Army job in Germany, a trucker takes a long-haul driver job in Britain where he runs into an organized-crime syndicate that controls the trucking industry.
After top lawyer James Blane gets an acquittal for a man who killed another man for sexually roughing up his trophy wife, the murderous town sheriff frames him for bribing a juror in the case.
A gold-digger floozy marries a wealthy wine producer but she secretly takes a young lover with whom she conspires to murder her husband for his fortune.