A story about struggling writer who puts himself in a death row cell instead of the look alike criminal so he could finish his novel.

Young guys from different social strata, some of whom have a criminal past, are called up to the airborne troops. Sergeant Alexey Burov (Alexey Serebryakov) was appointed commander of a platoon of recruits. It is he who instills in inexperienced "sons" the skills of hand-to-hand combat, mutual assistance and army savvy in the ongoing exercises. And now the day of baptism of fire has come. A unit of paratroopers receives an order to help border guards neutralize a large gang of drug traffickers trying to illegally cross the border...

Story of a rough little boy in Kazakh society in the last years of the USSR, owes something to the Italian neo realist movement of the 1940s.