Vito Polara is ambitious and wants to get as more power and money as possible. He decides to leave the cigarette smuggling and try to get the total control of the regional fruit and vegetable distribution considered more profitable. He looks for the help of a rural crime Boss.

Sasà Jovine (Nino Manfredi) is a self-styled lawyer involved in petty businesses with Neapolitan mobsters (camorristi). When one of his clients, don Michele Miletti (Paolo Stoppa) offers him a huge bribe (mazzetta) to search for his daughter who disappeared mysteriously taking with her some hot documents, Sasà finds himself trapped into a spiral of homicides.

In 1950s Naples, a couple struggles to be together against the will of the mother-in-law. In the end, not only will they be together, but the mother-in-law-to-be, a widow, finds love as well.