In an unnamed place and time, idealistic soldier Joe (Ralph Fiennes) strikes up an illicit friendship with a political prisoner names Thorne (Donald Sutherland) who eventually recruits him into a bloody coup to overthrow the corrupt regime. But in the post-revolutionary world, what Thorne asks of Joe leads the two men into bitter conflict, spiralling downward into madness until Joe's co-conspirators conclude that they must erase him from history.