Based on Carlo Bonini’s book “ACAB” recounting true events, ACAB stands for “All Cops Are Bastards”, a slogan first used by English skinheads in the 1970s, which quickly became a universal call to urban guerrillas, both in stadiums and in the streets.
Cobra (Piefrancesco Favino), Nero (Filippo Nigro) and Mazinga (Marco Giallini) are three “bastard riot cops” who, confronting violence on a daily basis, have learned to be targets. The violence in which they are immersed reflects a chaotic society ruled by hate. Their only goal is to restore social order and make people respect rules, even if it requires the use of force.
In the most difficult moment of their own private lives, they meet the young recruit Adriano (Domenico Diele), who has just joined their unit and needs to be trained. Educating him on legality and order and even on violent law enforcement becomes a means to tell the stories of the controversial riot cops unit, seen from the inside. ACAB is set against the background of several of the most shocking episodes of urban violence in contemporary Italian society: from the death of a protestor at the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001, to the death of a soccer fan, by a police officer’s gun, in 2007.