A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films in the late 1920s.

For the past four years, San Francisco cop Jack Cates has been after an unidentified drug kingpin who calls himself the Ice Man. Jack finds a picture that proves that the Ice Man has put a price on the head of Reggie Hammond, who is scheduled to be released from prison on the next day.