Taxi driver Joe Lourik [George Raft] gets into an argument with a finance company over payments owed on his new cab, and, convinced he’s been cheated, he reclaims the payments only to be arrested for robbery. Escaping with handcuffs still attached, he hops a passing freight train where he meets a tramp who tells him to see Patian, a thief and fence in San Diego, who can also remove his handcuffs. After meeting Patian [Victor Jory], it’s agreed that the cuffs will be removed on one condition: Joe must drive the getaway car for a bank robbery. The plan goes ahead, and the robbery proves to Patian that Joe has nerve and skill, but it also marks Joe’s entry into a criminal underworld he never intended to inhabit.
Patian sends Joe north to a boarding house in Sacramento to wait for his share of the loot, yet the house’s owner promptly warns him that Patian isn’t trustworthy with money once it’s in hand. Desperate for bus fare to return to San Diego to press Patian for his due, Joe contemplates a desperate improvised job: robbing the cash register of an empty storefront flower shop downtown. In the back room of the shop, a clerk named Laura Benson [Claire Trevor] emerges just as Joe is about to act, and the sight of her sparks something in him he didn’t expect. He chooses not to rob the register and instead falls hard for Laura, deciding to go straight and build a life that could include her.
With the winnings from a craps game, Joe buys a garage in Amesville and settles into a quieter routine. But the quiet life doesn’t last long; within a year, the police are itching closer, and Joe feels the old pull of crime tugging at him again. He travels back to San Diego to demand the money Patian promised, only to have Patian’s thugs force him into another bank-related job—this time a post office robbery. The pressure and fear of getting caught push Joe to vanish, leaving Laura to wonder what happened and whether she’ll ever see him again.
Time passes, and Joe’s connection to Laura deepens in the pages of the newspaper as his newborn baby becomes a symbol of ordinary happiness he fears he’s running out of time to claim. He finally meets Laura again, and she pleads with him to surrender and serve his time so they can start anew. The pursuit resumes as footsteps and police presence close in, and Laura is arrested as an accomplice while Joe escapes once more, torn between the lure of a lawful life and the pull of a desperate career he cannot fully abandon.
While Laura remains behind bars, Joe devises a daring plan to amass enough money to keep his daughter and Laura secure, launching a renewed crime spree that earns him the nickname “the Million Dollar Bandit.” The caper spree proves to be a grim measure of how far he’s willing to go to protect them. Laura serves her sentence and, when they finally meet again, she urges him to give himself up for good. Cornered by the very forces that chased him, Joe faces a moral crossroad with the weight of his choices bearing down. In the climactic moment, surrounded by law enforcement, he makes a fateful decision that seals his and Laura’s futures, as the pursuit and the past collide in a final, unavoidable surrender.
