Broadway, New Year’s Eve, 1929 unfolds through the keen eye of a muckraking reporter, Waldo Winchester Josef Sommer, who weave four major stories into one feverish night. In a smoky diner, The Brain Rutger Hauer, a gangster with a string of girlfriends, lounges with a gambler named Regret Matt Dillon and an enigmatic outsider who, with his bloodhounds, is being treated to a meal. Feet Samuels [Randy Quaid] is there too, hopelessly in love with Hortense Hathaway Madonna, a showgirl who has just been kicked out of the diner because of a tainted reputation. Feet plans to squeeze in one last wild night before sealing his fate with a suicide, having already sold his body to a medical doctor to dodge a bet he can’t win back. The air is thick with risk, longing, and a sense that every choice could tilt the city into chaos.
Harriet MacKyle Julie Hagerty, a sheltered yet curious socialite, schemes for a grand party at her estate that very night, drawn to the allure of danger and the promise of something more thrilling than polite society. A flower girl wanders in after Feet settles a debt with The Brain, who vaguely permits her to keep the change as a sly, half-acccepted gesture. But violence erupts when a hitman for the Brooklyn Mob stabs the gangster, leaving him wounded and bleeding in a chaotic rush. The Brain’s last command—to take him “home”—is met with resistance from his multitude of lovers, who refuse to let him return to a place that may swallow him whole.
Feet dives into a high-stakes craps game and rides a surprising wave of fortune, winning a treasure trove of cash and jewelry. Regret presses on, urging them to pivot to another game, but Feet holds firm to a promise sealed in blood and bravado: his decision to end it all. The reporter in Waldo Winchester is urged to intervene from the party, dialing up Hortense Hathaway to convey Feet’s deep, almost desperate, crush on her, a plea that adds another fragile thread to the night’s tangled web. Hortense must weigh the lure of a more glamorous life against the pull of something steadier: moving to New Jersey and starting a family, a wavering dream that could redefine her future.
Meanwhile, Regret remains the world’s unluckiest gambler, a perpetual streak of bad luck shadowing every bet, every decision, and every chance at redemption. Lovey Lou Jennifer Grey, a showgirl with a stubborn heart, loves him despite the odds—an emotional counterpoint to Feet’s doomed night and the other characters who drift in and out of Harriet MacKyle’s glittering, perilous party. As the city’s pulse thrums with music, whispers, and the grit of survival, the night sprawls open into a mosaic of desire, risk, and the fragile hope that even in a world built on frauds and fates, some truths might still surface when the clock strikes twelve.
