香港功夫动作片到底对好莱坞的影响有多深?本片是较早期的一个例证。从故事情节、场景布置、演员数量以至武打镜头设计,均大量移植港片,只不过导演约翰.卡彭特始终是美国人,虽然他卖力地想拍一部纯娱乐性的东方版《魔宫传奇》,仍不免会让中国观众觉得有点非骡非马。库尔特.拉塞尔在片中饰演卡车司机波顿,他与中国好友王记去机场接王的未婚妻,但她被歹徒绑架,主使者竟是修行两千年的恶魔。王为了救未婚妻,遂伙同波顿及一群中国功夫高手闯进魔殿,和妖魔鬼怪大决斗。影片拍得颇为热闹有趣,如将它视为用美国电影技术拍摄的中国功夫片当会发现不少好玩之处。Truck driver Jack Burton arrives in Chinatown, San Francisco, and goes to the airport with his Chinese friend Wang Chi to welcome his green-eyed fiancée Miao Yin who is arriving from China. However she is kidnapped on the arrival by a Chinese street gang and Jack and Wang chase the group. Soon they learn that the powerful evil sorcerer called David Lo Pan, who has been cursed more than two thousand years ago to exist without physical body, needs to marry a woman with green eyes to retrieve his physical body and Miao is the chosen one. Jack and Wang team-up with the lawyer Gracie Law, the bus driver and sorcerer apprentice Egg Shen and their friends and embark in a great adventure in the underground of Chinatown, where they face a world of magicians and magic, monsters and martial arts fighters.