The story follows the fate of three bank robbers (Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Yoshio Kosugi) on the run from the police, who hide out high up in the snowy Japanese mountains in a remote lodge inhabited by an old man, his granddaughter and an intrepid mountaineer (Akitake Kono) trapped there by a recent blizzard. They don’t know that the men are criminals, and a tense standoff starts to unfold.