Un uomo in ginocchio (1980)

Nino Peralta, a father of two, is weighed down by his precarious financial circumstances and his past as an ex-convict. He runs a kiosk opened with money from earlier robberies, and his son and a friend named Colicchia help him with the work. One day, the place where a woman had been held is discovered near the kiosk he runs. She had escaped a kidnapping organized by a Mafia gang and lasting several weeks; she is the wife of one of Palermo’s most prominent lawyers. Things become more complicated when the gang of criminals hired to free the kidnapped woman finds a small cup belonging to the café run by Peralta. He had made deliveries to the place where she was held, unaware of its grim truth. With the cup’s discovery, Peralta’s name is also added to the list of people sentenced to death, as he is believed to have been an accomplice of the kidnappers. A man named Platamona is then sent to kill him. Prompted in time by his friend Colicchia, Peralta discovers what this man looks like and who he is, opening the way to a tangled web of interests and power plays that forces him to claw his way back up so he can survive and keep his family from being destroyed, while confronting his criminal past and his conscience.