Bumbling Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) works as an Imperial guard in the Forbidden City of China. When Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) is taken hostage, Wang pursues her captors to the wild frontier land of Nevada, where he meets good-natured thief and occasional cowboy Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson). Using O'Bannon's love of money, Wang convinces him to help recover the princess, and together the two form a curious partnership -- the likes of which the West has never seen.