[2] Jimmy "Fingers" Angelelli (Harvey Keitel) is a brilliant young pianist who also works as a debt collector for his father Ben (Michael V. Gazzo), a local loan shark.

While trying to concentrate on an upcoming recital interview at Carnegie Hall, Jimmy loses focus when he falls for a woman named Carol (Tisa Farrow).

He gets further sidetracked when collecting a large debt from a mafioso named Riccamonza (Tony Sirico), who eventually threatens Ben's life.

"Harvey agreed to play Jimmy and quickly began to astonish me by taking the character into dimensions of darkness well beyond my original imagining", wrote Toback.

[4] Writing in The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby noted upon the film's release that it features "a series of anti‐climaxes that dog the movie with the persistence of a humorless flat‐foot," that "[w]ithout building any momentum whatsoever, the movie darts among its various plot threads like a cat who wants play, but can't stick at one thread long enough to have any fun," and that "something more than apparent talent was involved" in Toback's ability to have made the film.