Synopsis

A recently paroled criminal assembles a carefully planned team to rob a racetrack during a busy day of betting. Each participant has a personal reason for taking the risk, but jealousy, greed, betrayal, and bad timing threaten to unravel the scheme. As the plan unfolds through overlapping viewpoints, the heist's apparent precision gives way to mounting uncertainty and chaos.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was adapted from Lionel White's novel Clean Break.

• The production was made on a modest budget. United Artists contributed $200,000, while producer James B. Harris supplied additional financing, including money borrowed from his father.

• The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick and crime novelist Jim Thompson. Thompson was brought in chiefly to give the dialogue a harder, more naturalistic crime-fiction quality.

• The production used a fractured chronology, revisiting events from different characters' perspectives. This structure became one of the film's most distinctive formal features.

• The working titles included Clean Break and Bed of Fear before the final title was chosen.

• Cinematographer Lucien Ballard was hired after union rules prevented the film's director from also serving as cinematographer. Ballard and the director reportedly disagreed over camera placement and technical decisions during production.

• The film performed poorly at the box office despite receiving strong critical attention and appearing on several critics' year-end lists.

• Quentin Tarantino has identified the film as a major influence on Reservoir Dogs, describing that movie as his own version of this kind of heist story.

• It was the last feature filmed entirely in the United States by its director.