After escaping an attempt to shanghai him, Bat Morgan (James Cagney) heads to the Barbary Coast and Paul Morra's (Ricardo Cortez) famed saloon, where he kills the man who's been abducting sailors and becomes a hero. Impressed, Morra offers Bat a job, but Bat declines and teams with a politician against newspaper editor Charles Ford. Bat conflicts with newspaper owner Jean Barrat (Margaret Lindsay), and when violence erupts in the city, he finds himself blamed for a murder he didn't commit.