5 Against the House

Friends Al, Brick, Roy and Ronnie are upperclassmen law students at Midwestern University, Al and Brick a few years older than most of their colleagues in having served in the Korean War during those traditional college age years. Roy still wants to partake in traditional college hijinks such as freshman hazing, Ronnie is the wealthy intellectual who wants to do something intellectually grand just to show he can, Brick, unknown to Roy or Ronnie, is shell-shocked from his time in the war, his mental health problems which he outwardly believes will miraculously go away with time but which is only an excuse not to be reinstitutionalized, and straight-laced Al, beyond looking over Brick, who saved him during the war and whose mental health troubles he is well aware of, can't think beyond wanting to marry townie Kay, who has just started working as a nightclub singer and B-girl. Conversely, Kay has met her fair share of Als as students have come and gone, and wants to be sure of his intentions and her own feelings before rushing into marriage. Stemming from an incident the four encountered prior to the start of the school year, Ronnie has come up with his grand and what he believes is foolproof plan needing the involvement of four people: the perfect crime of robbing Harold's Club in Reno of $1 million with no guns or violence involved, he having no intention of keeping the money in it being returned to the club with no implications back to him or any of the team. While he tells Brick and Roy, who go along with the plan albeit for their own ulterior motives, they decide only to include Al without telling him, he who will have no idea that he is involved in a criminal scheme. Things are only complicated when Kay agrees to marry Al, she who comes along for that Reno wedding and honeymoon.