Gianfranco Barra

The film is set in Turin, Italy. It opens with a prologue sequence showing the young Italian Carabinieri clerk Filippo (Ribisi) learning to fly a helicopter using a flight simulator. When he accidentally crashes the virtual helicopter by ascending too dramatically, his instructor tells him, "In a real helicopter, you can't just keep going up and up," prompting Filippo to ask, "How high can you go?" The film then cuts to Phillipa (Blanchett), who is preparing to plant a bomb in the downtown office of a high-ranking businessman. Although everything goes according to her plan, the trash can in which she places the bomb is emptied by a janitor immediately after she leaves and later explodes in an elevator, killing four people. Philippa is tracked down by the Carabinieri, arrested, and brought to the station where Filippo works. When she is questioned, she reveals that she is an English teacher at a local school where several students have recently died of drug-related causes. Discovering that they had all been supplied by the same local cartel, she had contacted the Carabinieri with the names of the drug ring leaders, begging them to intervene, but was repeatedly ignored. At her wits' end, she decided to kill the leader of the cartel, the businessman whose office she targeted. In the process of her interrogation, Filippo (who is translating her confession for his superiors) falls in love with Philippa and helps her escape from Carabinieri custody. After she kills the drug lord who was her original target, the pair become fugitives from the law and flee to the countryside, where they eventually find refuge with one of Philippa's friends and finally consummate their relationship. When the authorities raid the house where they are hiding, the fugitives steal a Carabinieri helicopter parked on the front lawn and escape by air. The officers on the ground fire repeatedly at them, to no avail, as the craft climbs higher and higher and finally disappears.

Bud Spencer plays Banana Joe, a brawny yet friendly man who lives in a small rainforest village called Amantido with a huge number of his own children and regularly delivers bananas to a South American river port (hence his name). One day, the henchmen of a local gangster boss named Torsillo come ashore in Amantido to initiate the construction a banana processing plant. Of course, Joe (in typical direct-approach manner) evicts the goons, who promptly return to their boss. Torsillo finds out that Joe is trading bananas without a license and decides to exploit it. Upon his next delivery, Joe is apprehended by the police and given the choice of either acquiring a legal license or getting his boat taken away and himself arrested for illegal shipment. Joe travels to the nearest city, which to him is a new world, as he grew up in the rainforest. Unfamiliar with city life and only marginally literate, he falls prey to a con man named Manuel, who has a gift of the gab which has placed him in favor in several high positions, even with the country's President for his help in developing a remedy for a genetic defect in the Presidential family. Eventually Joe meets Dorianne, an attractive singer, in a bar owned by Torsillo, where he gets a temporary job as a bouncer. Torsillo also runs into Joe personally time and again, and after having seen Joe easily finishing off five of his toughest goons, the gangster boss has taken to jumping out of the next window in a panic the instant he lays an eye on Joe. In pursuit of his license, Joe finds out that he must get himself registered with the authorities in order to "exist" legally. Since he has no proper official records, however, this proves to be highly difficult, and the constrictions and loop-holes of bureaucracy provide no help in resolving the matter. Joe even has to enlist in the Army, but after driving his drill sergeant to the point of despair and even to degradation, he deserts and lands himself in prison when in his impatience he takes matters (literally) into his own hands. In prison he re-encounters Manuel, whom he intends to pay back for his schemes, but it turns out that the con man actually has a heart of gold: having taken pity on Joe's plight, he had used his connections to get Joe the much-needed license. From Dorianne, who visits him in prison, Joe learns that Torsillo has used his absence to facilitate the construction of the banana plant. Joe and Manuel promptly break out of prison and return to Amantido, where Joe proceeds to thrash a newly built casino and Torsillo's thugs. Afterwards the police arrive, but not to arrest Joe. Instead they've been looking for Manuel: his remedy he had concocted for the President has worked, and Manuel (and Joe as well) receive amnesty as well as the fulfilment of a wish (Manuel decides to become Minister of Finance). To top it off, Torsillo is revealed to be no stranger to the authorities, and he and his entourage get arrested immediately. Dorianne decides to stay with Joe in Amantido, where she opens a school which Joe also attends, and Joe's life goes otherwise back to normal.

Luisa De Dominicus is a Milanese piano teacher who moves to Lucca to be with the man she loves: Ferdinando 'Bonci' Marinotti, a city councilman campaigning for mayor on a platform of moral values. She is of the belief that Fernando is single, living with his ailing mother. This, of course, is far from the case. The boys living in her apartment building mistakenly believe Luisa is a call-girl who uses piano teaching as a cover for her true profession, and word soon spreads among the building's dirty old men. The resourceful boys drill a well-concealed hole in the wall between Signorina Luisa's flat and the bedroom of the landlord's son, Marcello Busatti, allowing them a spectacular view of their spectacular neighbor. Marcello quickly becomes infatuated with Luisa, but is also conflicted regarding her supposed profession. Eventually Luisa learns of Fernando's philandering nature, and after a vigorous misunderstanding, satisfies Marcello's unrequited lust/love.