Actor Maximillian Schell functioned as coproducer and director of End of the Game. Conversely, director Martin Ritt is the leading actor in this existentialist crime story. Ritt plays Hans Barlach, a Swiss police inspector who has spent 30 years trying to pin the murder of the woman he loved on Richard Gastmann, an "untouchable" industrialist (Robert Shaw). When Barlach's assistant Lt. Schmied (Donald Sutherland) is killed while trying to get the goods on Gastmann, the inspector puts idealistic detective Walter Tschantz (Jon Voight) on the case. Jacqueline Bisset costars as Anna Crawley Schmied's girl friend, who attempts to solve the case on her own.