My Life’s on the Line 1978

The film centers on the infamous Fong Chin, famously known as “Minute Fong,” a kung fu virtuoso whose lightning-fast strikes are timed against his father’s gold watch. In the martial-arts world, this skill earns him both fascination and fear: some see him as a tool for payback, a ruthless hitman, while others wish him dead for the collateral damage his methods leave in their wake. A scheming low-life, unaware that Fong Chin is right beside him, attempts to arrange his own murder to cover up the crimes he’s committed—crimes that include the murder of his father and other misdeeds. In a decisive display of precision, Fong Chin eliminates the would-be killer and his henchmen in under a minute, proving that his reputation is more than mere legend.

Yet the path of violence weighs heavily. Fong’s own brother disapproves of his line of work, urging him to quit as a life of killing begins to take a toll. A memory surfaces through a crucial flashback: as a child, Fong watched bandits slaughter his parents, a trauma that helps explain, even as it complicates, his sense of justice and duty. This emotional burden begins to reshape his choices, nudging him toward a different horizon even as the world around him keeps trying to pull him back into conflict.

Into this tense inner life steps Ying Ying, Ying Ying, a former lover and a prostitute who longs for a normal life with Fong Chin. She pleads for a quieter existence, but he pushes away her hopes, offering money instead, and leaves after two men try to lay hands on her. The act seems to close a chapter, yet the pull of their past lingers. When Fong Chin returns, he learns that Ying Ying has taken her own life by poison, a tragedy that pierces him more deeply than any external threat.

Meanwhile, Chow Sau-tung, Chow Sau-tung, reappears as his employer, pressing him toward one more assignment. The terms are clear: kill a man in his fifties named Lai in a town where the surname Lai is common. Fong agrees to take the job, marking it as his last mission, but the job’s difficulty is built in from the start—the town is populated by countless men named Lai, and finding the right target requires more than sheer brawn; it demands patience, cunning, and restraint.

As Fong acclimates to life in the town, he befriends a mischievous yet good-hearted local boy who is seeking a father figure. This chance relationship deepens when he meets the boy’s widowed mother, Chu Hua. She strikes him as a reminder of Ying Ying, and he agrees to teach the boy kung fu on the condition that the child stays in school. At first, Chu Hua resists the idea that martial arts could become a path for her son, blaming violence for the death of her husband. But as the master-student bond grows, so does the family’s sense of possibility, and the boy’s grandfather, the target Mr. Lai, grows wary of the unusual relationship blossoming around his lineage. The watch that serves as Fong’s clockwork oath also begins to draw suspicion from Mr. Lai, who senses something unfamiliar in the outsider’s presence.

Gradually, Fong Chin becomes enveloped in the ordinary rhythms of life in the town, and the assassination mission slips from the forefront of his mind. Chow Sau-tung’s patience wears thin as reports from two henchmen arrive—three days to complete the kill, or else. The tension ratchets up when Fong confronts Lai, and tragedy erupts. The grandson of Lai intervenes to defend his grandfather, and in the horrific moment, the boy is accidentally struck by Fong Chin. The child dies in the arms of his mother and grandfather, and the shock of this act shatters Fong’s resolve. He flees, carrying the weight of guilt as Chu Hua and Mr. Lai mourn. The tragedy accelerates when Chow Sau-tung’s men return, finishing the mission that Fong could not complete. The next morning brings horror: the entire Lai family lies dead, Chu Hua is murdered after being raped, and the house is left in ruins.

The revelation changes everything. A distressed Fong Chin faces a harsh truth: his former ally and employer, Chow Sau-tung, manipulated him into killing the Lai family as payback for crimes Chow had orchestrated or concealed. Realizing that he has been used, Fong resolves to answer with revenge. He sets out to hunt down Chow Sau-tung and his henchmen, determined to make them pay for the lives lost and the betrayals that cost him his own humanity.

In the end, the story traces the collision between a man’s lethal gifts and the consequence-laden choices that come with them. It is a film about duty versus violence, about the price of revenge, and about a man who teeters on the edge of redemption as the past relentlessly closes in. The journey of Fong Chin—torn between the power to end lives swiftly and the ache of every life destroyed in the process—offers a stark portrait of a kung fu legend forced to confront the human costs behind the legend.