After Mick Nich, a 1930's Chicago gangster, sells out his own gang to the police, the Mafia hires the best hitman in town, Johnny Pollack, to follow him to Odessa, USSR. Upon arrival, Pollack loses his memory and goes on various adventures with a group of thick-headed Odessa locals who think he is a harmless butterfly collector.

A peasant catches a thief in his house and summons his friends—by old custom, he must settle the score. But as the night deepens, his heart softens, and before long it is the man himself who has to be driven out of his own home.