At the turn of the century in Hong Kong, Dragon Ma (Jackie Chan), a courageous no-nonsense coast guard tries of catch San-Po ‘King of the Seas’ (Dick Wei), a notorious pirate responsible for looting and smuggling goods from foreign export, but fails miserably due to several double-crossings by other high-classed crooks (led by Dick Wei). Therefore, he is placed in a difficult situation to become a police officer with the rest of his coastguard buddies (including Mars and Tai B) and team up with a small-time crook and con-artist friend from his past (Sammo Hung) and a detestable police inspector (Yuen Biao) to thwart the efforts of several crime-lords and capture the notorious fleet of pirates. Wan Man-Ying and Kwan Hoi-San feature as two opposing leaders of the coastguards and Hong Kong police respectively and Wu Ma makes a guest appearance.

This movie has everything: action, well-worked comedy, death-defying stunts and strong camaraderie. The different actors also help give the movie wonderful direction (i.e. Yuen Biao being strict and principled, whereas Sammo Hung is more practical and streetwise in his ways) where the movie mainly focuses on Jackie Chan (as done time and again in all of the other productions with the three professional theatre acrobats). Moreover, this movie is obviously high-budget and features some top-notch surroundings and locations. The movie never gives a claustrophobic feel (even when there are so many great actors on screen all at the same time). The character development, friction between different personalities and background to them is very superbly worked by the movie and shows that it was thoroughly thought-through. Jackie Chan also tries to be dramatic at specific points when needed and succeeds at some level; therefore this movie is not simply a melee of laughs.

Here all of the actors were given specific roles and none of them had any pressure put on them, to over-perform; this is the key to success for this feature. Unfortunately, this movie has the involvement of so many male stars that it hardly leaves any space for the few female actors to take the lead role (in this movie they are always the damsels in distress) and have no character whatsoever (being cute, pretty and cultured in stature) which is disappointing. Producer Leonard Ho must have earned great credit for this movie and it is among one of the finest collaborations between so many great actors (especially Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao) to-date. The plot is also quite unique viewing the simple aim of the movie to destroy the pirates and contains various sub-plots and an array of twists.

Overall, this movie is not very intellectually challenging but is bound to keep everyone interested, features great action and seems to have barely recognisable actors popping up here and there in nearly every different scene. It also moves at a fairly fast pace throughout, keeping everybody entertained and never slows down unless absolutely necessary.

Overall Rating: 8.6/10