In one storyline a holy man urges a group of peasant pilgrims to follow an ox deemed as sacred in hopes that their devotion to it will bring an end to the drought.

[1] The other storyline follows a group of soldiers who are sent to the region to thwart the attempts of impoverished civilians to plunder a storehouse for food owned by the wealthy mayor of the small town of Milagres, Bahia.

Tensions come to a head when the charismatic truck driver and former soldier named Gaucho becomes frustrated by the peasants' inability to change their situation.

After he sees a father reacted apathetically to death of his child from hunger, Gaucho takes up arms and engages in a firefight with the occupying soldiers who eventually kill him.

[8] Along with Nélson Pereira dos Santos' 1963 drama, Vidas Secas ("Barren Lives"), and Glauber Rocha's 1964 film Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (known in English as "Black God, White Devil"), The Guns is part of Brazil's "Golden Trilogy" of Cinema Novo and regarded as one of the key films that brought worldwide attention to Brazilian cinema.