The film begins with Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), a young and idealistic lawyer who is about to take the bar exam. Jacek ?azar (Miroslaw Baka) is a 21 year-old man, coming from the countryside. He wanders the streets of Warsaw and has apparently nothing to do he keeps asking about a taxi stand but the first one he finds is very busy. Waldemar Rekowski, a middle-aged taxicab driver (Jan Tesarz), overweight, cruel-looking, he lives in the Dekalog apartment block. He enjoys the freedom of his profession, a living wage and the power to ignore people whom he does not want to take into his taxi and ogles at young ladies.
Jacek makes dirty jokes on people like throwing a stranger who intended to hit on him into the urinals on a public toilet, dropping stones from a bridge on to passing vehicles, causing an accident there or shooing pigeons, which an old woman wants to feed. He has a photograph of a little girl blown up and then goes to a cafe. The taxi driver wanders around the city looking for a fare. Jacek keeps a length of rope in his bag and a stick; he wraps a bit of rope around his hand but stops when he spots two girls playing at the other side of the window at the cafe and he engages in a game with them. He then goes to a taxi stop and jumps into a taxi. Jacek asks to be driven to a part of the city near the countryside. Jacek kills the driver using the rope, but he is not successful and has to finish his killing using a big stone. He then takes the taxi to the river and prepares to dump the body. Jacek turns on the radio and a children's song can be heard, which clearly upsets him.
Jacek is imprisoned and talking to his lawyer Piotr, for whom this is a first case after he has finished his studies. There is neither much evidence nor motive for this murder, Piotr has no chance defending his young client although he is told that his arguments and legal strategy were rather convincing the outcome could not have been any different. Jacek gets the death penalty and will be hanged. Before the time of execution Jacek reveals that his baby sister died in an accident caused by a truck that his friend had been driving under the influence and he never recovered from this, he asks to be buried next to her and the blown up photo given to his mother.
The execution time has come, Jacek is held by at least six policemen on the way to his execution, chained by hands and legs. The judgment itself is performed with no less coldness than the act committed by Jacek.
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