In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city’s subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he’s battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts.

Cher is devastatingly funny, sinuous and beautiful as Loretta, an unlucky-in-love Italian widow who finds romance through the intervention of the Manhattan moon. With her wedding to a close friend just weeks away, she meets – and falls hopelessly in love with – his younger brother (Cage)!

It’s tough beat for San Francisco police lieutenant Jake Martin (Walter Matthau) when he has to investigate a city bus massacre in which a madman opened machine gunfire on eight people.