This John Woo film tells the tale of Mark and Ho, friends and couriers for a Hong Kong crime syndicate with a large counterfeiting operation. Ho is double-crossed during a set-up and turns himself in to the police and Mark is shot during the firefight of a retribution hit. The plot is complicated by the fact that Ho's younger brother, Kit, is a rookie cop whose reputation is tarnished by his gangster brother. When Ho gets out of prison, he wants to start a new life, free of crime. Unfortunately, he is haunted by his past, with the crime bosses leaning on him and Mark encouraging him to return to a life of crime as his partner. In typical Woo fashion, the various factions clash and our protagonists engage both the police and the gangsters in a bloody bullet-fest.