SYNOPSIS 

San Francisco is a city on the brink, where vice runs rampant and the Barbary Coast bleeds corruption. Malcolm Hutchins, a rugged young cowboy in his early twenties, arrives in town with his 14-year-old sister, Rose, for a cattle auction.

But as they pass through the seedy underworld of the Coast, they’re ambushed by Tong Hatchet Men. Malcolm is brutally attacked and left for dead with a vicious gash across his face. Rose is gone – kidnapped for trafficking into the darkest corners of Shanghai.

Days later, scarred, broken and consumed with guilt, Malcolm retreats to his family’s cattle ranch near Mt. Shasta, where he begins planning a rescue mission with his blood brother, White Crow, chief of the Okwanuchu people and master of black obsidian hatchet warfare.

Together, they prepare for Malcolm’s descent into the city’s criminal underbelly. But before they can act, tragedy strikes again – highwaymen torch the Hutchins ranch and burn his parents alive.

Now fueled by rage and sorrow, Malcolm becomes something else entirely and returns to the scene of the crime – reborn as the Black Hatchet, a vengeful force trained in White Crane Kung Fu by a mysterious drifter – the Werewolf Monk, a rogue Shaolin master hiding from his past.

Armed with twin obsidian blades of justice, Malcolm prowls the Barbary Coast and begins a bloody rampage through the back-alleys, opium dens, brothels, gambling halls and fight pits, dismantling the Tong’s criminal empire while saving dozens of kidnapped girls in the process.

His ultimate target: The Pale Devil, an albino corporal and sadistic enforcer of the Shanghai Green Dragon Tong, plus Rose’s captor, the villain who sliced his face and ordered the attack that ruined Malcolm’s life.

Just as Malcolm closes in, fate intervenes. An 8.3 magnitude earthquake rips through the city, followed by a four-day firestorm that turns San Francisco into an apocalyptic inferno.

Amid the chaos, Malcolm is conscripted to fight fires – and during a daring rescue of children from a burning, collapsing hotel, he uncovers a hidden trapdoor and escapes into an underground network of gold rush tunnels.

In the flooded burrows, Malcolm finally confronts the Pale Devil, who is escaping to Shanghai with the wanted Werewolf monk and with three captive girls – one of them is Rose.

An epic Hatchet Fu battle erupts between Malcolm, the Pale Devil and his elite killers, while the Werewolf Monk duels alongside him. When Malcolm is nearly defeated, Rose fights back, saving her brother in a moment of fierce courage.

Malcolm and Rose narrowly escape the collapsing hideout. The Werewolf Monk is swallowed by the torrid current. Above ground, the city in ruins, still burns.

Malcolm searches for his beloved Lorna, a nurse, only to find her hospital covered in bricks and a buried woman, who resembles Lorna, submerged in the rubble.

On the verge of collapsing, Malcom, gathers the strength to get Rose to safety, fleeing through the devastation with her on horseback evading gunfire and carrying her to the triage at Cathedral Hill, passing near Lorna.

In one final act of heroism, Malcolm climbs a flaming church tower to extinguish the fire threatening to reignite the remaining city – then exhausted, he passes out and tumbles from the roof.

He is saved in a dramatic rescue and awakens in Lorna’s arms. Both believed the other dead. Rose close by.

But, Malcolm’s mission isn’t over. The Pale Devil may be dead, but Black Bart and his gang who burned his home, are on the run. And beyond the Pacific lies Shanghai – and the Green Dragon Tong Lord – whose empire must fall before Malcolm, Rose and Lorna are truly free.