Charlie Adamo, Peter Falk, the Mafia’s West Coast operations chief, sets his sights on the gleaming Royal Casino-Hotel in Las Vegas and pressures the venue’s manager Abe Stilberman, Steffen Zacharias, to sell him a 20% stake. When Stilberman refuses, Adamo engineers a risky scheme by pulling Hank McCain, John Cassavetes — a recently released bank robber — back into the life he hoped to leave behind, with his son Jack, Pierluigi Aprà, playing a central role as the one who outfits the plan while keeping Adamo’s involvement under wraps. Jack presents a bold, and ultimately dangerous, plan to rob the casino without revealing the true mastermind behind it, and Hank, though wary of his son’s naivete and the tangled motives at work, agrees to move forward.
McCain begins to size up the Royal, delving into its layout and security as he drifts toward a life on the run. Along the way he becomes entangled with Irene Tucker, Britt Ekland, a young woman eager to ride the wave of this dangerous venture, and the two quickly become allies, and later lovers, in a city where loyalties shift like desert winds. The casino, unknowingly to Adamo, is a Mafia-owned property, a detail that sets the stage for a deadly power struggle. Don Francesco DeMarco, Gabriele Ferzetti, orders a halt to any further attempts and condemns Adamo’s plans to fail, but Adamo’s own ambitions remain unresolved as the web tightens around everyone involved.
The pressure mounts when Francesco learns of Adamo’s involvement, and the truth is dragged out through the cunning machinations of Francesco’s wife. Adamo is tortured for information and ultimately killed, but not before he has already set in motion a chain of events that will pull Hank, Jack, Irene, and Rosemary Scott, Gena Rowlands, into a desperate fight for survival. Rosemary, once a lover and partner in crime to the old days, agrees to secure safe passage out of the country for the couple, only to be captured herself. She chooses to end her life rather than betray a confidant, a moment that underscores the peril that now shadows everyone connected to the scheme.
With the net closing in, Irene is spotted and captured, and she is taken to McCain’s waiting boat. Francesco’s men bring her to the same location where Hank plans to make a final stand, and in a brutal confrontation, Irene is killed. Enraged by the killings and the unraveling plot, McCain opens fire on his attackers, but the odds are insurmountable: he is shot and killed in a quiet, haunting ending that leaves the fate of the two lovers sealed in tragedy. The casino plot dissolves into silence as the bodies are disposed of, and the final image lingers on a man who could not outrun the consequences of a life steeped in crime.
