Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—who adopts the code name of "Carlos" early in the film—is a grim and elusive Venezuelan Marxist terrorist whose life is tracked as he executes dozens of assassination plots, abductions, and bombings across Europe and the Middle East in the cause of Palestinian liberation. For two decades, he is one of the world's most wanted terrorists. The film begins in Paris in 1973, where the young Ramírez Sánchez is endeavoring to prove himself as a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fighter, and ends with his capture in Sudan, in 1994. In between, Carlos and his fellow terrorists wreak havoc on the Left Bank in Paris, storm OPEC's headquarters in Vienna, and carry out other devastating acts of politically motivated violence.