On returning to his beat on Easy Street, the unruly mob knocks the Tramp unconscious and drops him into a nearby cellar where he manages to save the Mission worker from a nasty junkie after accidentally sitting on the drug addict's upturned needle.

Supercharged by the effects of the drug, he takes on the mob and heroically defeats them all, and as a consequence restores peace and order to Easy Street.

By the end of the film, a New Mission is built on Easy Street and the inhabitants flock to it, even including the former bully: now a well-dressed respectable, churchgoing citizen.

The Moving Picture World offered the following praise: "In 'Easy Street,' Charlie Chaplin's latest and best, if we may venture to obtrude so decided an opinion, an original key has been struck.

At any rate, it is Chaplin at his funniest; and nothing much more entertaining, by way of comedy, could be imagined..."[2] A reviewer from Variety wrote, "The resultant chaos and several new stunts will be bound to bring the laughter, and the star's display of agility and acrobatics approaches some of the Douglas Fairbanks pranks.

Chaplin has always been throwing things in his films, but when he 'eases' a cook stove out of the window onto the head of his adversary on the street below, that pleasant little bouquet adds a new act to his repertoire.