No filme, Dina Sfat e o irmão Paulo José matam o pai, com a ajuda também de Nelson Xavier, o noivo. Daí herdam a fortuna do construtor e se mudam para o Reduto, casarão de campo onde passaram a infância. Ainda que a polícia tenha, aparentemente, engolido a possibilidade de desaparecimento do empresário, não será muito fácil para eles desviarem de seu incômodo assédio.

Foreign country wants to perpetrate a coup in Brazil. They employ a new technique of subliminal messages, which are transported along with radio and TV waves. In no time, the population gets deranged and the country dives into ultimate chaos. Only a few people who don't watch television nor listen to radio are immune to it, and have the responsibility to abort the scheme, without really knowing what they're dealing with.

In 1963, in the village of Milagres in a very poor area of Brazil, a group of soldiers arrive to protect the store of a politician from a group of starving people. They have rifles for guarding the food and avoid the sacking by the population. One of the soldiers, completely drunken, kills a local in a dispute with his colleagues for killing a goat. The truck driver Gaúcho (Átila Iório) revolts against the passivity of a father that has just lost his little daughter, who died of starvation, and the pacific population that only prays and follows a preacher, and fights against the soldiers.