Nominally set during World War II, the film opens with a Japanese assault on an Allied camp, and a map reveals that the target lies somewhere in Canada. Four Allied generals, including one who introduces himself as Abraham Lincoln, are captured by Japanese troops, and Lieutenant Don Wen, Jimmy Wang Yu, is called in to organize a high-stakes rescue mission.
With the lure of a huge reward, Don Wen rounds up a motley crew: two kilt-wearing soldiers, a hobo named Old Sun, an alleged escape artist called Grease Lightning, the con artist Billy, Lily, Brigitte Lin, a femme fatale who sports knee-high red leather boots and a bazooka, and Lily’s partner, Chien Te-Men. En route to the Japanese base where the generals are being held (the film places the base in Luxembourg), the group picks up two small-time crooks, Sammy and Emily, Jackie Chan and Chang Ling, who trail the party hoping to land a share of any cache of money.
As the mission pushes forward, Don Wen is seemingly killed in a sudden ambush by spear-wielding tribesmen, and the team is captured by a cannibal Amazon tribe led by an effeminate man in a tuxedo. After the Amazon tribe is wiped out, they spend the night in a haunted house full of jiangshi before pressing on to their destination. Upon arrival they discover the generals are gone and the base littered with the dead Japanese soldiers. Before they can understand what happened, they are ambushed by sword- and axe-brandishing Japanese Nazis riding in 1970s-era muscle cars.
Here the plot leans into melodrama as the group is picked off one by one by a machine gun, with another felled by a sword in the buttocks. In the end, with only Sammy and Emily left standing, Don Wen arrives (noted by the audience through Jimmy Wang Yu again in memory), executes Old Sun, and explains that he engineered the whole affair so that his rescue team and the Japanese soldiers would kill each other off, leaving him free to claim the reward. Aiming to silence the last witnesses, Don Wen shoots Emily and forces Sammy into a one-on-one confrontation.
After a long martial arts duel, Don Wen is defeated as Sammy detonates explosives hidden in the main building, obliterating it. The generals soon appear, demanding to know why they were not rescued earlier, but Sammy dismisses them with a wry line: > I don't know any generals. To me you look like clowns!
The film ends with a wounded Sammy and Emily driving away in a jeep, while the pursuing generals give chase. The action swings between travelogue-style set pieces, spoof elements, and frenetic combat, wrapping a wildly uneven adventure in a veneer of pulpy humor and over-the-top spectacle.
