Synopsis

In 1881, Chinese Imperial Guard Chon Wang travels to Nevada after Princess Pei-Pei is kidnapped and taken to America. Stranded in the unfamiliar West, he joins forces with Roy O'Bannon, a talkative train robber. Their uneasy partnership leads them through gunfights, betrayals, and martial-arts battles as they confront the criminals behind the abduction.

Factoids & Trivia

• The title is a pun on the classic Western High Noon, while Chon Wang's name sounds like "John Wayne."

• Although the story is set largely in Nevada, much of the movie was filmed in Alberta, Canada, including the areas around Drumheller, Calgary, Exshaw, and Cochrane. The Forbidden City scenes were filmed on location in Beijing.

• Production ran from May 25 to August 20, 1999. The movie was released in the United States on May 26, 2000.

• The horseshoe fight presented a practical problem: a fake horseshoe was too light to work convincingly, while Jackie Chan refused to hit stunt performers with a real one because of the danger.

• Brandon Merrill, who plays Chon Wang's Native American wife, was a real-life rodeo champion.

• The drunken hotel sequence was intended to include a drunken kung fu routine inspired by The Legend of Drunken Master. With no time to choreograph the sequence, the filmmakers instead used Chon's bubble-blowing as a visual reference.

• The film combines the martial-arts picture, the Western, and the buddy comedy. Its success led to the 2003 sequel Shanghai Knights.