An ex-con claims that he wants to go straight after serving his sentence, but finds it impossible to emerge from the shadow of his former crimes in the first chapter of director Fernando di Leo's influential crime saga. Ugo Piazza may be a free man, but in the eyes of the mafia, the police, and his sadistic former associate Rocco, he will always be a criminal. When everyone who knows Ugo becomes convinced that he has stashed away $300,000 from a previous crime, the race is on to find the missing money at all costs.