In his directorial debut, Robert De Niro stars as Lorenzo Anello, a hard working bus driver who must stand up to the local mob boss if he is to keep his son from falling into a life of crime. The streets of the Bronx are a tough place for a kid to grow up. You learn fast or lose everything. Lorenzos son, Calogero learns about the virtues of hard, honest work from his father who owns nothing but his integrity. He also learns about easy money and life on the streets from the man who owns them, a mobster called Sonny(Chazz Palminteri). Now Calogero must choose between earning respect like his father, or commanding it like Sonny. Always one step away from a broken bottle, a pistol whipping or a shotgun blast, one young man, torn between two worlds just a city block apart, is about to learn that the streets run two ways. For every cent of easy money, theres a tough, and sometimes deadly lesson to be learned.