The story is about a day when an assassin is given the task to blow up the newly constructed State building and kill the Governor of the State . About to make the kill , he has an epiphany & undergoes a change of outlook . In-spite of his attempt to redeem himself , he is unable to escape his own fate . The entire film is a narrative by the graduate student , who is compiling a thesis on forgiveness and uses the assassin's life as the basis for his story . When the assassin meets his unrelenting fate , the narrator is aggrieved to find his thesis baseless and realizes that forgiveness might still be prevalent by law but redemption is illusionary.