The moving story of four young men struggling against overwhelming odds to remain honest. Crooked employer shorts their earnings; they turn to crime, their first theft ending in tragedy.

Four boys are involved in a robbery in which a policeman is killed. Caught, they are told they will most-definitely be convicted. Three will get life sentences and only one will be given the chair if they tell who pulled the trigger. Left to themselves, the boys must decide which will forfeit their life for the others. Will it be the one who actually pulled the trigger, the one who has a family, the one who brought the gun in the first place, or the one who has the least prospects of leading a happy life if ever paroled.—MartianWax

Friends Ollie Denker, Eddie Richards, Johnny Doyle, and Stanley Badek, all young men, have just attempted to rob the arena box office of its receipts from the boxing matches that were happening inside at the time. The robbery does not go according to plan not only in all four of them being caught with Johnny shot in the leg in the process, but a police officer is shot dead by one of the boys. While the four are in custody together, their individual very different stories are told in flashback with the common themes being the quest for money for one reason or another and they each often making bad choices in the process. Their recent collective past is also told in how they got to the point of attempting the robbery. While the district attorney tells all four that they could face the death penalty for killing the police officer, he also offers them a potential deal of giving up the shooter who alone would face the death penalty while the others would face lengthy prison sentences instead. The question then becomes what the boys will do individually and collectively under the circumstance regardless of who actually pulled the trigger.—Huggo