96 Minutes
96分钟
Taiwan, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 118 mins.
Director: Hong Zixuan 洪子烜.
Rating; 6/10.
Taiwan’s first high-speed train thriller has its moments but is over-long and flawed by a confused and often confusing script.
STORY
Taibei, 9 Sep 2021. Working under his superior (and old school friend) police captain Li Jie (Li Liren) – who was decorated for his role in saving as many people as possible in an earlier train crash – bomb disposal officer Song Kangren (Lin Bohong) defuses a bomb in an already evacuated cinema but then discovers too late that there’s a second bomb in a nearby department store in the same mall. That bomb kills 26 people and injures over 100. The supposed bomber, Lai Bingcheng, dies in the explosion. Song Kangren is relieved to discover that his girlfriend Huang Xin (Song Yunhua), a police officer, is alive and well; but he is emotionally wrecked and, though lauded as a hero, later resigns from his job. Three years later, on 9 Sep 2024, all three attend a memorial service for the victims of the bombing, at which one man, Wu Changren (Li Mingzhong), makes an emotional speech about his late wife. Li Jie tells Song Kangren he’s about to be promoted and tries to persuade him to rejoin the police force, but Song Kangren turns him down, adding that he also has to get home that same evening. That evening he, his now wife Huang Xin and his mother (Lv Xuefeng) board the 21:30 high-speed Train 115 to Gaoxiong in the south of the island – a 96-minute journey. On board are also several others who attended the memorial service. While Song Kangren and Huang Xin discuss having a proper wedding ceremony and honeymoon, Li Jie suddenly appears and says that the authorities had earlier received tips that a bomb may be on board; since getting on the train, he has also been receiving texts from the bomber. He asks for Song Kangren’s help. Their conversation is overheard by physics teacher Liu Kai (Wang Bojie), who was at the memorial service with his wife Yang Tingjuan (Yao Yiti) as they lost their young son Xiaokai in the department store bombing. In addition, Liu Kai is embroiled in a sex scandal, so Yang Tingyuan, whom he’s been trying to contact by phone, left separately on the earlier high-speed Train 289. Liu Kai offers his help to Li Jie but is dismised as a busybody. Song Kangren urges Li Jie to stop the train, but Li Jie says that is impossible. Song Kangren then receives a text message on his phone telling him not to stop the train, otherwise “the hell of three years ago will repeat itself.” Song Kangren’s mother then receives texts on her phone, saying “You think your son was a big hero? He’s hiding a major secret.” By calling the number back, she automatically starts the timer on the bomb, which turns out to be on Train 289, not on Train 115. Soon afterwards there is an explosion in one of the carriages. Yang Tingjuan then calls Liu Kai to tell him there is another bomb on Train 289, in a red suitcase in carriage 7. She helped plant it with her vengeful younger brother Yang Lihui (Cai Fanxi), who is still upset about the death of his young nephew Xiaokai and is prowling Train 289 with a detonator in his hand. Li Jie and Song Kangren also come to realise, with the help of Liu Kai, that the bomb’s timer is linked to the train’s velocity, speeding up if the train slows down and vice versa. For Song Kangren, history seems to be repeating itself, and the only solution may be to sacrifice himself for the greater good by somehow getting on to Train 289. But there are also deeper currents to the whole bombing that Song Kangren and Li Jie have yet to discover.
REVIEW
Bombs galore plague the rail journey between Taibei and Gaoxiong in 96 Minutes 96分钟, Taiwan’s first high-speed train thriller. Despite generally good production values, it’s a mixed bag that contains some intriguing psychological elements but ends up being too complicated for its own good, increasingly o.t.t. on an action level, and way too long at almost two hours. Despite some okay performances, this second theatrical feature by Gaoxiong-born writer-director Hong Zixuan 洪子烜, now in his mid-30s, is a film of individual moments rather than a cohesive action-drama that emotionally engages the audience and gradually builds atmosphere and tension from that. Box office was strong in Taiwan (NT$207 million), though production costs were high (NT$160 million) and theatrical revenues in other markets have been minimal. (In China it took a nothing RMB7.8 million.)
The first-draft screenplay was finished in 2017, reportedly inspired by South Korean smash hit Train to Busan 부산행 (2016) which, though a vampire rather than a terrorist movie, is also set on a high-speed train and on the country’s main north-south line. The script underwent several changes over the years to avoid comparisons with other train films but always retaining the focus on the characters’ psychology rather than just the action. In the meantime Hong made his first feature, odd-couple crime/action movie The Scoundrels 狂徒 (2018) – for which he’s still best known – cookery comedy Cuillère 白日梦外送王 (2021, TV film), an episode in TV drama series Taiwan Crime Stories 台湾犯罪故事 (2023), and female-boxer drama Love Punch 倒数回击 (2023, TV film). Shooting on 96 Minutes started in autumn 2024.
The irony is that the psychological aspects of the picture are its weakest and most confused. Just as in The Scoundrels, there’s a feeling that Hong – whose background is largely in action movies – can’t wait to get to the hand-on-hand stuff, and as in that earlier film there’s a very visceral, South Korean flavour to the fisticuffs near the end. (The film shares the same action director, Taiwan’s busy Hong Shihao 洪昰颢.)
The movie’s main problems almost all stem from the script’s construction, starting with an opening that begins with two flashbacks in the main characters’ lives (a train crash some unspecified time ago, and then a double bombing in a Taibei mall three years ago) before getting to the main story that starts on a high-speed train taking several mourners back home after a memorial service in Taibei. With three lead characters – a bomb disposal specialist who’s retired from the police force, his police officer wife, and the specialist’s former boss and old school friend – the psychological centre of the movie is already widely spread. Each has different issues from the past, not helping to give the plot a clear sense of direction.
Add in several other passengers – including the specialist’s mother, a physics teacher involved in a sex scandal, and his browned-off wife – and there’s already too many people jostling for the viewer’s attention. It’s not even clear for a while that the teacher’s wife and her younger brother, who have pivotal roles in the plot, are actually on a separate train that left slightly earlier – one of several confusing plot points that aren’t helped by the cutting, which never establishes a clear sense of space and location. The other passengers – almost all annoying – add nothing to the film and are simply distracting.
With the hangdog-looking bomb disposal specialist – who’s weighed down with guilt from a mistake during the Taibei mall bombing – played in hangdog manner by Lin Bohong 林柏宏, and his former boss and best pal given no special shading by actor Li Liren 李李仁, the only lead performance that’s at all engaging is by actress-singer Song Yunhua 宋芸桦 (Cafe. Waiting. Love 等 一个人 咖啡, 2014; Our Times 我的少女时代, 2015; Take Me to the Moon 带我去月球, 2017; Love the Way You Are 我的青春都是你, 2019), who’s generally likeable even in her worst films. 96 Minutes isn’t one of them, but unfortunately her role, which starts interestingly, gets sidelined by the action, in which she plays no major part apart from repeatedly telling the passengers to calm down. Other roles are well played, especially by Wang Bojie 王柏杰 (retro film-industry comedy Forever Love 阿嬤的梦中情人, 2013) as the physics teacher and Yao Yiti 姚以缇 (black crime comedy The Gangs•The Oscars•and the Walking Dead 江湖无难事, 2019) as his wife.
The VFX, on which a sizeable amount of time and money was spent (for a Taiwan production), are good, though the numerous swooping shots above the speeding train become repetitive. Despite the promise of its title, and various on-screen countdowns along the way, the film isn’t a real-time thriller; in fact, in the finale it stretches real time to a ludicrous extent for purely melodramatic reasons that undercut rather than enhance any residual tension. At 90-odd minutes it would be a much more focused production, though cutting still wouldn’t solve the script’s structural weaknesses. Further hinderances to becoming emotionally engaged with the action include the amount of time and dialogue conducted on mobile phones, as well as a late-on twist that probably seemed clever during the writing phase but ends up taking the film in a different direction when the audience is already weary from an over-extended second half.
For the record, the film has no connection at all with the identically titled US crime thriller 96 Minutes (2011), written and directed by Aimée Lagos.
CREDITS
Presented by TAICCA (TW), Smart Capital (TW), Ryder Brands Group (TW), Miroan Media (TW), Long Ying Investment (TW), udnFunLife (TW), Machi Xcelsior Studios (TW), Flash Forward Entertainment (TW), Taipei Film Commission (TW), Taichung Film Development Foundation (TW), Moonshine Studio (TW), Estrella anilo (TW), WoWing Entertainment Group (TW).
Script: Hong Zixuan, Chen Yifang, Yang Wanru. Photography: Wang Jincheng. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music supervision: Hou Zhijian. Art direction: Su Guohao. Styling: Xu Liwen. Sound: Chen Weiliang, Narubett Peamyai. Action: Hong Shihao. Visual effects: Wen Zhaoming.
Cast: Lin Bohong (Song Kangren), Song Yunhua (Huang Xin), Wang Bojie (Liu Kai, physics teacher), Li Liren (Li Jie), Yao Yiti (Yang Tingjuan, Liu Kai’s wife), Cai Fanxi (Yang Lihui, Yang Tingjuan’s younger brother), Kong Lingyuan (Xiao’ai), Li Mingzhong (Wu Changren), Huang Qibin (Bin), Lv Xuefeng (Song Kangren’s mother), Zheng Zhiwei (Yang, businessman), Chen Xuezhen (train conductress), Wu Jianhe (Ken).
Premiere: Taipei Film Festival (Opening Night Film), 20 Jun 2025.
Release: Taiwan, 5 Sep 2025.