Sordi plays opposite Vittorio De Sica in a sardonic comedy evidently based on an incident of urban lore, in which a Roman traffic cop stopped a magistrate, leading to a controversial trial. Sordi plays the unemployed Otello, whose son's heroism in saving a city official from drowning helps him pull some strings: the mayor (De Sica) has Otello hired as a motorcycle cop. They also serve who lie in wait, and to prove his mettle, the zealous Otello gives the mayor himself a speeding ticket. As it is election time, a political scandal ensues, at the end of which Otello's whole sorry family has learned an important civics lesson, Italian style. Director Luigi Zampa's films of the sixties were pervaded with his indignation at the decaying state of public life in modern Italy, and Sordi played a gallery of tragicomic smalltime chiselers (and chiselees) in these films.