In the film, an idealistic military officer becomes sickened by the government's use of extrajudicial killing and torture to suppress the terrorism that their incompetence and corruption has fostered.
Worried only about infiltration by agents of the hated internal security chief, who knows he can expect no mercy, the colonel leads the plot to success, but realises too late that he overlooked the danger of a clique within his coup's own forces, and finds himself facing a firing squad along with those he has deposed.