Song, Ken-Ren
Austin Lin
Song, Ken-Ren
Overview
Former bomb disposal expert, Song Kang-Ren, and his fiancée, Huang Xin, board a high-speed train that contains a bomb. At the same time, Liu Kai, a well-known physics teacher who was involved in an affair scandal, also boards this same train in order to win back his wife, Ting Juan, who took the prior high-speed rail to return home in frustration… After all, can the bomb be successfully defused this time? and resolve the crisis?
Full Plot (Spoilers)
✦ AI-generated full plot summary
Three years after a double bombing in a department store and a cinema left 26 dead, survivors and families of the victims board Train 115 from Taipei to Kaohsiung for a memorial service. Among the passengers are Song Kang-Ren, a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer who was hailed as a hero during the incident; his mother, Mrs.
Sponsored
Cast
Huang, Xin
Vivian Sung
Huang, Xin
Liu, Kai
Edison Wang
Liu, Kai
Li, Jie
Lee Lee-zen
Li, Jie
Yang, Ting-Juan
Eleven Yao
Yang, Ting-Juan
Yang, Li-Hui
Kent Tsai
Yang, Li-Hui
Mr. Wu
Frederick Lee
Mr. Wu
A-Pin
Ng Ki-pin
A-Pin
Mrs. Song
Lü Hsueh-feng
Mrs. Song
VP Yang
Cheng Chih-wei
VP Yang
Train Conductor
Vera Chen
Train Conductor
A-Ken
Wu Chien-ho
A-Ken
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Weight of the Commute
There is a moment early in Tzu-Hsuan Hung’s *96 Minutes* that tells you exactly what kind of ride you're in for. Song Kang-ren, a disgraced bomb disposal expert, stares at an explosive device hidden on a high-speed train racing toward Kaohsiung. But the timer isn’t your usual ticking-clock gimmick. It’s a decimal chronograph, and the countdown shifts with the train’s speed. Slow down, and the timer burns faster. It’s a nasty little piece of physics, clever enough to spike your pulse on the spot. I only wish the movie kept up with that idea for longer.
Hung is working in the old, sturdy tradition of transportation thrillers set in tight spaces, from the 1975 Japanese classic *The Bullet Train* to the full-throttle Hollywood blast of *Speed*. But Taiwanese genre filmmaking tends to carry a heavier fixation on moral debt, and this US$5 million blockbuster leans hard into that. Three years earlier, Kang-ren saved a movie theater from an explosion, only to set off a second blast at a nearby mall that killed dozens. Now the bomber is somewhere on the train with Kang-ren’s family and former colleagues, demanding a public reckoning for the police cover-up.
You can feel the film straining to hold together its two halves: a tight action premise and a slower, grief-soaked story about survivor’s guilt. For every tense exchange in those narrow, fluorescent aisles, the movie slams on the brakes for another tearful flashback. (I eventually stopped counting how many times it circled back to the mall bombing trauma.) What keeps it from buckling under all that sincerity is the cast. Austin Lin as Kang-ren and Vivian Sung as his fiancée and fellow cop, Huang Xin, both arrive with the glow of Taiwanese rom-com royalty, thanks to crowd-pleasers like *Marry My Dead Body* and *Our Times*. Lin, stripped of that usual easy charm, makes himself look smaller inside the role. His shoulders cave in. His eyes flick around with the fried, restless panic of someone who hasn’t slept well in years. Even the way he holds his hands around frightened passengers tells the story: palms open, fingers trembling just a little, always braced for the next hit.
Whether that emotional weight lands will depend entirely on how much patience you have for genre mashups. *South China Morning Post*'s James Marsh accurately nailed the resulting friction, calling it an "overcomplicated tale" that "overflows with guilt, life lessons and earnest emotions without much of a conclusion." He’s not wrong. By the last act, the movie swaps procedural suspense for a long stretch of tearful confessions that more or less defuse its own bomb. Even so, I’m weirdly drawn to a blockbuster willing to treat its hero’s trauma as an actual, ugly obstacle instead of a stylish bit of backstory. *96 Minutes* gets tangled in its own machinery, but I can’t entirely dismiss a thriller willing to ask whether cutting the right wire matters at all when the man holding the pliers is already shattered.
There is a moment early in Tzu-Hsuan Hung’s *96 Minutes* that tells you exactly what kind of ride you're in for. Song Kang-ren, a disgraced bomb disposal expert, stares at an explosive device hidden on a high-speed train racing toward Kaohsiung. But the timer isn’t your usual ticking-clock gimmick. It’s a decimal chronograph, and the countdown shifts with the train’s speed. Slow down, and the timer burns faster. It’s a nasty little piece of physics, clever enough to spike your pulse on the spot. I only wish the movie kept up with that idea for longer.
Hung is working in the old, sturdy tradition of transportation thrillers set in tight spaces, from the 1975 Japanese classic *The Bullet Train* to the full-throttle Hollywood blast of *Speed*. But Taiwanese genre filmmaking tends to carry a heavier fixation on moral debt, and this US$5 million blockbuster leans hard into that. Three years earlier, Kang-ren saved a movie theater from an explosion, only to set off a second blast at a nearby mall that killed dozens. Now the bomber is somewhere on the train with Kang-ren’s family and former colleagues, demanding a public reckoning for the police cover-up.
You can feel the film straining to hold together its two halves: a tight action premise and a slower, grief-soaked story about survivor’s guilt. For every tense exchange in those narrow, fluorescent aisles, the movie slams on the brakes for another tearful flashback. (I eventually stopped counting how many times it circled back to the mall bombing trauma.) What keeps it from buckling under all that sincerity is the cast. Austin Lin as Kang-ren and Vivian Sung as his fiancée and fellow cop, Huang Xin, both arrive with the glow of Taiwanese rom-com royalty, thanks to crowd-pleasers like *Marry My Dead Body* and *Our Times*. Lin, stripped of that usual easy charm, makes himself look smaller inside the role. His shoulders cave in. His eyes flick around with the fried, restless panic of someone who hasn’t slept well in years. Even the way he holds his hands around frightened passengers tells the story: palms open, fingers trembling just a little, always braced for the next hit.
Whether that emotional weight lands will depend entirely on how much patience you have for genre mashups. *South China Morning Post*'s James Marsh accurately nailed the resulting friction, calling it an "overcomplicated tale" that "overflows with guilt, life lessons and earnest emotions without much of a conclusion." He’s not wrong. By the last act, the movie swaps procedural suspense for a long stretch of tearful confessions that more or less defuse its own bomb. Even so, I’m weirdly drawn to a blockbuster willing to treat its hero’s trauma as an actual, ugly obstacle instead of a stylish bit of backstory. *96 Minutes* gets tangled in its own machinery, but I can’t entirely dismiss a thriller willing to ask whether cutting the right wire matters at all when the man holding the pliers is already shattered.