November 2, 1975: Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered in the outskirts of Rome. The suspect, a 17-year-old hustler, pleads to have acted in self-defense, citing Pasolini's notorious sexual habits as proof. However, many inconsistencies start to undermine his version, pointing to him not having acted alone or even being assaulted in the first place. Was Pasolini also killed for another reason?

Roman TV technicians Fabio and Enzo have been unable to find decent jobs. They decide to crack a safe at a jewelry in Milan. To get the layout of the store, they enlist a beautiful but unsophisticated young woman, Deborah. To find underground access to the store, they get help from a sewage worker. An obese trapeze artist is called for disarm the store alarms. The clever Mrs. Motta, old hotelier, is also involved. Will they succeed?

Although the drug is present in this film, the Crack this movie is about is, metaphorically, the crack in society which all the protagonists inhabit in a rundown neighborhood in Rome.

In 1985 in Milan Michele Croce is now in prison and decides to answer the magistrate's questions, telling how in the seventies he became the ruler of the Milanese underworld.

Fifteen-year-old Sabrina has lived with her father since he split with her mother. As the film unfolds it gradually becomes clear that Sabrina is a victim of incest.

Marco, a television journalist, reads "red lies" on his teletext system in order to gather material on the homosexual world for a story he's working on. Unfortunately, he is implicated in a series of murders in which the victims are all gay. Marco becomes a suspect and is forced to investigate the crimes himself in order to prove his innocence.