Bardone, a petty con man, is arrested by the Gestapo and coerced into impersonating a partisan leader in order to expose another resistance organizer.

In 1943 Genoa, Grimaldi is a swindler pretending to be a colonel in the Italian army to get money from the family of people put into jail by the Nazis. Once caught, the Gestapo makes a deal with him: he will stay alive if he impersonates General Della Rovere, a leader of the Resistance who has just been shot by the Nazis, to be put into a political jail where he is supposed to identify another Resistance leader.—Yepok

In 1943 Genoa, habitual gambler and amoral swindler Emanuele Bardone is a charming petty conman who supports his addiction by posing as a middleman between the worried relatives of the Gestapo captives and the German authorities--at the right price, of course. However, when Bardone is caught in the act, and his luck runs out, he has no other choice but to accept the offer of S.S. Colonel Müller to impersonate the recently-killed General Della Rovere, a true hero of the Italian Resistance, instead of facing a firing squad. Now, as Emanuele enters a political prison in Milan in high hopes of drawing information about the hidden identity of another leader of the Resistance, little by little, his new mockery eventually awakens a slumbering conscience. In the end, who is Emanuele? Is he a hero, or is he a fake?—Nick Riganas