(There are Spoilers) Being told in flashback by gangster Fred Dorella, Vic Taybak, we get the lowdown of the bank heist that he was involved with the on the lamb cop killer Johnny Cabot, Johnny Cash.
Johnny fled him home state of New Jersey after a blotched warehouse robbery where his partner Pete,Max Manning, and two policemen were shot and killed. Cooped up with his gun moll Doris, Midge Ware,in this flea bag motel in Carmellia Gardens outside L.A Johnny is edgy and a bit irritated in not being on a bank job where he can get back into action as a seasoned criminal.
It's when Johnny's contact in town bowling alley owner Max, Merle Travis, gets in touch with him about a pending bank robbery that things start to pick up for the by now deeply depressed, in being stuck in dull as dishwater suburbia, Johnny Cabot. Meeting New York hoodlum Fred Dorella Johnny not only gets the job that he's been craving for, as the both wheel and hit man, but as a bonus finds out who set him and the late Pete up in the blotched warehouse job back in Jersey.
The plan thought out by Dorella to rob the Harper Federal Trust in Carmellia is foolproof with Johnny holding the bank's vice president Ken Wilson, Donald Woods, wife Nacny, Kay Forrester, hostage in her suburban home. Dorella is then to get Wilson to give him $70,000.00 from the bank vault in order to insure his wife's safety. The plan as air-tight as it is has in fact a number of very serious flaws in it that both Dorella and Johnny, having no idea of Wilson's secret love life, didn't take into account. There's also the problem of both Wilson and Nacy's six year-old boy Bobby, little Ronnie or later to be known as movie mogul Ron Howard, who has a habit of showing up unexpectedly from school. Johnny who would kill a man or woman just for looking at him cross-eyed or not appreciating his country & western music, he plays the guitar in his spear time, has this thing about shooting adolescents.
Jonny Cash, in what seems to be his first movie role, has the time of his life playing the ruthless and murderous Johnny Cabot doing as good of a performance as you would have expected from a young James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Even when Johnny is slapping Nancy, and threatening to blow her brains out, around he still finds time to play his guitar, Cash also wrote and sings the films title song "Five Minutes to live", and crack a number of jokes that puts off the edge of the tension that's built up in the film. Wilson who's being blackmailed by Dorella to clean out his bank vault is really not all that interested in his wife's safety since he's planning to leave her for his girlfriend Ellen Harcourt, Pamela Mason, and fly to Las Vages to get married that very evening!
Everything falls apart as both Dorella, in the bank, and Johnny, at the Wilson home, get royally screwed not by Ken Wilson and Nancy but by a number of people or innocent bystanders, that includes little Bobby, who unexpectedly get involved with their so-called master plan. Like all perfect crimes the one that Dorella and Johnny concocted didn't factor in the unexpected and it was the unexpected that in the end did them both in.
Johnny fled him home state of New Jersey after a blotched warehouse robbery where his partner Pete,Max Manning, and two policemen were shot and killed. Cooped up with his gun moll Doris, Midge Ware,in this flea bag motel in Carmellia Gardens outside L.A Johnny is edgy and a bit irritated in not being on a bank job where he can get back into action as a seasoned criminal.
It's when Johnny's contact in town bowling alley owner Max, Merle Travis, gets in touch with him about a pending bank robbery that things start to pick up for the by now deeply depressed, in being stuck in dull as dishwater suburbia, Johnny Cabot. Meeting New York hoodlum Fred Dorella Johnny not only gets the job that he's been craving for, as the both wheel and hit man, but as a bonus finds out who set him and the late Pete up in the blotched warehouse job back in Jersey.
The plan thought out by Dorella to rob the Harper Federal Trust in Carmellia is foolproof with Johnny holding the bank's vice president Ken Wilson, Donald Woods, wife Nacny, Kay Forrester, hostage in her suburban home. Dorella is then to get Wilson to give him $70,000.00 from the bank vault in order to insure his wife's safety. The plan as air-tight as it is has in fact a number of very serious flaws in it that both Dorella and Johnny, having no idea of Wilson's secret love life, didn't take into account. There's also the problem of both Wilson and Nacy's six year-old boy Bobby, little Ronnie or later to be known as movie mogul Ron Howard, who has a habit of showing up unexpectedly from school. Johnny who would kill a man or woman just for looking at him cross-eyed or not appreciating his country & western music, he plays the guitar in his spear time, has this thing about shooting adolescents.
Jonny Cash, in what seems to be his first movie role, has the time of his life playing the ruthless and murderous Johnny Cabot doing as good of a performance as you would have expected from a young James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Even when Johnny is slapping Nancy, and threatening to blow her brains out, around he still finds time to play his guitar, Cash also wrote and sings the films title song "Five Minutes to live", and crack a number of jokes that puts off the edge of the tension that's built up in the film. Wilson who's being blackmailed by Dorella to clean out his bank vault is really not all that interested in his wife's safety since he's planning to leave her for his girlfriend Ellen Harcourt, Pamela Mason, and fly to Las Vages to get married that very evening!
Everything falls apart as both Dorella, in the bank, and Johnny, at the Wilson home, get royally screwed not by Ken Wilson and Nancy but by a number of people or innocent bystanders, that includes little Bobby, who unexpectedly get involved with their so-called master plan. Like all perfect crimes the one that Dorella and Johnny concocted didn't factor in the unexpected and it was the unexpected that in the end did them both in.