Review | One Second Champion movie review: boxing drama with a fantasy twist from Vampire Cleanup Department director

Canto-pop singer Endy Chow stars as a man who can see one second into the future and who takes up boxing to help fund surgery for his hearing-impaired son

At heart, this is a conventional tale about having a never-say-die spirit, with Hung Cheuk-lok, as the protagonist’s goofy son, proving a real scene stealer

Reading Time:2 minutes

Endy Chow (left) and Chanon Santinatornkul in a scene from One Second Champion (category: IIB, Cantonese), directed by Chiu Sin-hang.

Published: 3:15pm, 10 Mar 2021Updated: 3:56pm, 10 Mar 2021

3/5 stars

In the past couple of years, Hong Kong cinema has produced one inspirational boxing drama after another – 2019’s We Are Legends, 2020’s Unleashed and Knockout – even amid the dearth of cinematic releases in the period. Originally set to open in December but postponed because of coronavirus lockdown measures, One Second Champion is cut from the same cloth, its fantasy twist notwithstanding.

With a plot outline that may remind viewers not just of Knockout, but also the 2013 megahit Unbeatable, this solo directing effort by Vampire Cleanup Department co-director Chiu Sin-hang tells the bittersweet story of a deadbeat father, Chow Tin-yan (Canto-pop singer Endy Chow Kwok-yin), who takes up an ominous challenge in the boxing ring to impress his child.

Tin-yan was “dead for one second” when he was a newborn baby, and ever since has had the ability to see one second into the future. Though he briefly became a media sensation as a kid, he has grown up a slacker and a loser, who is content with his dead-end job in a neighbourhood bar.

Now a single father, Tin-yan’s only motivation in life is to fund surgery for his hearing-impaired son (Hung Cheuk-lok) – that is, until boxing fanatic Yip Chi-shun (played by the director) spots his dexterity and offers to teach him boxing as a way to revive his own failing gym.