Franco Franchi plays Franco, a Sicilian imitation of Bruce Lee who becomes entangled in a chaotic quest for dignity and a Rome-bound dream. Trained by Luigi Antonio Guerra as Don Vito, a Chinese man exiled for smuggling rice from Palermo to Beijing, Franco is pushed to master kung-fu with hilariously compromising results.
When word arrives that the municipality of Rome is offering a traffic-police post to the winner of a martial-arts contest, Franco heads to the capital at the suggestion of his teacher. In Rome, he is taken in and coached in the gym of Gianni Agus as il maestro Kon-Chi-Lai, while staying at the inn run by Giancarlo Fusco as l'oste Kekor Nuto. Here, Franco meets and falls for Unci Vuncia, played by Irina Maleeva, adding a tender, comedic counterpoint to the bruising action.
Yet the path to victory is blocked by Lho-Kon-Tè, the rival master portrayed by Enzo Andronico as il maestro Lho-con-tè, who wants to secure the contest for his champion Attila. To derail Kon-Chi-Lai’s camp, Lho-Kon-Tè dispatches three killers from Milan: Ki Kaka Mai (Nino Terzo), Tutti Li Tui (Alfonso Tomas), and Va A Fan (Gino Pagnani). These three relentlessly test Kon-Chi-Lai’s men, while Franco is pursued by fear itself and forced to retreat rather than confront the trio head-on.
The humiliation fuels Franco’s longing for revenge, but his early efforts falter. He returns to Kon-Chi-Lai to learn a special technique, the Travertine Hand, and undergoes a comic, grueling training montage that suggests real power might be at hand. After seeming mastery, Franco appears to unleash a single strike that blows up a house—though in truth it was the workers’ demolition project, not a miracle of martial arts. Undeterred, Lho-Kon-Tè attempts to buy off Franco, sending Cavalier Strozzi to collect a debt and test the hero’s resolve. When Franco cannot settle up, Strozzi bites the hand Franco uses for the technique, rendering it temporarily unusable and complicating the path to victory.
The tournament day arrives, and Attila appears to overwhelm all of Kon-Chi-Lai’s students. Yet with a crucial helping hand from Unci Vuncia, Franco devises a final, decisive move and defeats Attila with repeated headbuttons, clinching the win for Kon-Chi-Lai’s side. Lho-Kon-Te, not finished, plots one last revenge and sends his three hired killers again, but Franco rises to the challenge and defeats them.
A final complication surfaces when Lho-Kon-Te tries to seal a match by arranging a marriage between Franco and Don Vito’s ugly daughter, a scheme that Kekor Nuto resists. In the end, the beauty of Franco’s stubborn heart wins out: he gnaws through the last obstacle, marries Unci, and steps into the role of Rome’s traffic policeman, securing a new life in the city he came to conquer.
