In his directorial debut, two-time Academy Award-Winner 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. Lorenzo's son Calogero learns about the virtues of hard, honest work from his father, who owns nothing but his integrity; but he 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, there's a tough, and sometimes deadly, lesson to be learned.