It was intended as an updated version of John Ford's 1935 film The Informer, based on the book of the same name by Liam O'Flaherty, but the setting was transposed from Dublin to Cleveland.

Johnny's best friend Tank, who formerly worked at the steel mill with several of the men, is supposed to help with the robbery, but when the group goes to his house, they find him drunk and watching the television coverage of King's funeral.

Tank is a middle-aged, unemployed alcoholic who supported King's non-violent approach, which the others have rejected in favor of violent revolution.

The next day, Tank, feeling remorseful, goes to visit B.G., the leader of the revolutionary group, and his girlfriend Jeannie, who is Johnny's sister.

tells him the committee has decided to expel him from the group due to his drinking and unreliability, noting that they do not have time to run a rehab.

On the street, Tank meets Clarence "Daisy", a homosexual black man who makes good money as a police informant.

The disillusioned Tank seeks comfort from his girlfriend Laurie, a single mother who lives in the Hough ghetto neighborhood and supports her two small children through a combination of welfare and prostitution.

The representative spots Tank and starts berating him and putting him down for not working and supporting his children (though Laurie argues they aren't his).

He asks Tank to go to the revolutionaries' meeting that night and have them send some men to watch outside his mother's house while he visits.

The bar patrons assume Tank won his money in the local numbers game lottery.

Tank then wanders aimlessly around town, donating money to a street preacher, visiting the steel factory where he worked for 20 years, and stopping at an amusement arcade where he shoots a cowboy puppet and rambles about black revolution with some wealthy, slumming white people in front of "fun-house" distortion mirrors.

Two of his ex-comrades take him out to a burning scrapyard to kill him, but he manages to get away, hop a passing train, and hide in a rundown hotel on the edge of the Flats, an industrial area.

In 1969, Variety reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation "closely monitored the making of Uptight right up to the eve of its premiere.

During its production, crew members and studio workers acted as informants to agents at the FBI's Cleveland office, who directly reported details of the set to bureau director J. Edgar Hoover.

However, Ebert criticized the decision to shoot the film as a remake of a story that has too little in common with black civil rights.