Druggist Joe McCabe foils a robbery, and his brother Tommy decides to join the state police in order to impress Joe and Tommy's new date, Jerry, a policeman's daughter. When the robbers exact revenge on Joe, Tommy hunts them down.
A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.
At a desert diner, the lives of five strangers become linked through a single twenty-dollar bill. Shot for $20,000 and starring Philip Baker Hall, the short premiered at Sundance and later inspired Anderson’s debut feature Hard Eight (1996).
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
P.C. George Dixon is a long-serving traditional copper who is due to retire shortly. He takes a new recruit under his aegis and introduces him to the easy-going night beat. Dixon is a classic ordinary hero but also anachronistic, unprepared and unable to answer the violence of the 1950s.
Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.