

User Score
5 votes
Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction. Focusing on a year in the lives of three professional criminals, this gritty profile—which includes hidden-camera footage of actual thefts—exposes the "petty" crimes that are paralyzing America.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
EN

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

After two gang-related killings in "Center City," a suspect (who was framed) is arrested, released on bail...and murdered. Inspector Briggs of the FBI recruits a young agent, Gene Cordell, to go undercover in the shadowy Skid Row area (alias George Manly) as a potential victim of the same racket. Soon, Gene meets Alec Stiles, neurotic mastermind who's "building an organization along scientific lines." Stiles recruits Cordell, whose job becomes a lot more dangerous.