During the Japanese invasion of China, Chen Chunsheng witnesses his father brutally killed by the enemy. Driven by an unshakable obsession, he ignores his mother’s desperate pleas, sneaks away from home late at night, and enlists in the army, vowing to fight against the Japanese and save his nation before returning to his hometown. Through bloodshed and hardship on the battlefield, he matures into a soldier.
During the Japanese invasion of China, Chen Chunsheng witnesses his father brutally killed by the enemy. Driven by an unshakable obsession, he ignores his mother’s desperate pleas, sneaks away from home late at night, and enlists in the army, vowing to fight against the Japanese and save his nation before returning to his hometown. Through bloodshed and hardship on the battlefield, he matures into a soldier.
Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.
During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Chen Zhen, the star pupil of a recently-deceased martial arts teacher battles a Japanese dojo which seeks the demise of his fighting school.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
All her life, Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was where she belonged. Unqualified to be sent as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn to send herself to a poor, remote village. There, she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as 'foot inspector', advising the local Mandarin, and even winning the heart of mixed-race Captain Lin Nan. Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives.
As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.
Chen returns to his school when he finds out that his martial arts teacher has died. When he learns that his school students are harassed by some hooligans, he gears himself up to save them.
After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.
Chan is asked by a young, wealthy lady to take her sick brother to a particular doctor in order to be cured. To reach this doctor, Chan and a handful of travelling companions must pass through bandit-infested wild country. They meet and kung-fu-fight several gangs of thugs along the way.
A brother and sister escape from Japanese-occupied Shanghai to Japanese-occupied Taiwan, to stay with their grandfather who runs a Kung-Fu school there. However, the master of a Japanese Kung- Fu school in Taiwan has plans to bringing all other schools on the island under his domination, and part of his plan involves the murder of the grandfather.
Chen Sheng goes off in search of his nephew who has been abandoned by his father. Along the way, he encounters numerous people from his past and also those from his future.