O caçador Frank Walsh (Nicolas Cage) trabalha para alguns zoológicos dos Estados Unidos e está dedicando sua vida para proteger uns animais que capturou na Floresta Amazônica. Ele embarca num navio cargueiro sem saber que está ao lado de Richard Loffler, um assassino que está sendo extraditado para os EUA em segredo, e, com isso, a viagem começa a ter problemas.
Marcus Ray é um vendedor de uma marca de calças que vive à grande em Hong Kong. Quando tenta provar que está inocente de falsificar mercadoria esbarra com uma conspiração da mafia russa, que tenta colocar no mercado negro do terrorismo internacional uma nova arma: uma micro - bomba.
A bordo do cargueiro Glencairn, a vida da tripulação é vivida com medo, solidão, suspeita e camaradagem. Os homens contrabandeiam bebida e mulheres para bordo, lutam uns com os outros, espionam uns aos outros, confortar uns aos outros quando a morte se aproxima, e ajudam o outro quando em perigo.
As the Second World War breaks out, German freighter captain Karl Ehrlich is about to leave Sydney, Australia with his vessel, the Ergenstrasse. Ehrlich, an anti-Nazi but proud German, hopes to outrun or out-maneuver the British warship pursuing him. Aboard his vessel is Elsa Keller, a woman Ehrlich has been ordered to return to Germany safely along with whatever secrets she carries. When Ehrlich's fiercely Nazi chief officer Kirchner commits an atrocity, the British pursuit becomes deadly.
In a warehouse area at night, a drunk chief engineer is stabbed to death by someone who whistles. After the break of dawn, two seamen join the crew of a rusty cargo ship Kaiyo Maru. One is a troublemaker with bad attitudes, Senkichi Nomura, who pursues an enemy in order to take revenge for his father's death. The other is Keizo Sasaki, a buff, eagle-eyed man on board for a certain mission.
A ship is attacked at sea for its cargo by a group of thieves who murder a newlywed doctor and rape his wife. Three years later her twin sister is kidnapped by the same pirates, who begin to die strange deaths...
Panic arises among Allied POWs aboard a Japanese freighter when they learn that the ship is actually a decoy target for American submarines on night patrol. The prisoners unite and attack their Japanese captors just as an American sub surfaces and, not knowing the prisoners are aboard, prepares to torpedo the ship.