 While driving an armored car in a lonely road, Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) recalls his life, after divorcing his beloved wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) and working in many places in the United States of America, from the moment he returned home in Los Angeles a few days ago. Although traveling for almost two years trying to forget Anna, he is still obsessed with her. However, when he arrives in town, the sentimentally inconstant Anna gets married with the gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). Steve plans a heist of the armored car with Slim, expecting to double-cross the criminal and escaping with Anna to another city to begin a new life, but things do not happen as he intended it was.