A streetwise charmer who loses his friends' money in a rigged game comes up with a plan to make everything come out right, but ends up in a comedy of errors.

A combustible performance from Bob Hoskins is the fuse that lights this underworld saga, a landmark of British crime cinema. Hoskins plays Harold Shand, an ambitious London mobster who, just as he attempts to close a major real-estate deal with the American Mafia, finds his crime empire rocked by a string of attacks, sending him on a ruthless quest to find out who₂s responsible.