Brief Story Line
Song Kang Ren (Austin Lin - The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang, Women in Taipei TV series etc), a former bomb disposal expert was returning home with his fiancée Huang Xin (Vivian Sung - Till We Meet Again, Adrift in Love TV series etc) and his mother (Lu Hsueh-Feng) using a high speed train. His journey was interrupted when he was informed by his former superior Li Jie (Lee Lee-Zen - The Black Box, The Kidnappers TV series etc) that there was a bomb threat on the train which would detonate in 96 minutes from the time it departed the station. Though Li Jie suspected it might be just prank call, he still requested A-ren's help due to something on the message. To avoid panic, they decided not to tell anyone except the train employees.
Meanwhile a passenger who was expert in physics named Liu Kai (Wang Po-Chieh - Eye of the Storm, Gourmet Affairs TV series etc) was communicating with his estranged wife Yang Ting-juan (Yao Yi-Ti - Dead Talents Society, More than Blue: The Series etc) on different train. She was on board with her brother Ting-hui (Kent Tsai - Breaking and Re-entering, The Teenage Psychic TV series etc) a victim of another bomb three years before. Unfortunately the bomb threat was real and passengers on the train were all panic including the vocal Mr. Wu (Frederick Lee - Trinity of Shadows TV series, Fish Memories etc) and several others.
So what was the motivation of the bomber? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When I found out about this film, I was hoping it would be a real-time kind where everything had to be concluded in a certain time. As I started watching, the movie began with a background story that would have significant implication to the subsequent events. During those moments, it seemed the event did unfold in real time. As soon as the scene move towards the train and the bomb threat was found out, it got more exciting. However I felt that the story telling was a bit rough and difficult to understand. Perhaps I was not concentrating enough but I did not even realize that Liu Kai's wife and brother were on board different train.
Anyway the story moved in a steady pace, though not sure why I did not feel the intensity even after a scene that was supposed to make it more suspenseful. Mid way through the movie, the intense moment was enhanced when A-ren had to do something drastic and the time to defuse the bomb was reduced a lot. Unfortunately this was also the moment when the time seemed to almost froze cause the few minutes suddenly was shown in 5-10 minutes which made it a bit ridiculous and unrealistic. Sadly the visual effects were not that great either and they looked obviously computer generated.
There was also a bit of mystery involving the real perpetrator and the motive which would be explained at latter stage. This part of the plot was OK to me as they still made sense. However there was a mid end credit scene which was confusing and unnecessary. It was unclear what the purpose for showing the scene. The movie itself was directed by Hung Tzu-hsuan (The Scoundrels, Taiwan Crime Stories TV series etc) who was also credited as co-writers together with Evonne Chen and Yang Wan-ju (The Last Thieves, Get the Hell Out etc).
I think the main cast were quite OK in here, but the support cast were a bit unconvincing in their roles. The strong emotions that we were supposed to feel was rather bland. I did think that the brief action sequence of the film was not bad. In fact, to my surprise, this film got 3 nominations of the Taiwanese awards (Golden Horse) for its action choreography, cinematography and art direction. The movie had duration of 117 minutes including closing credits which I thought was pretty long.
Overall this was a supposedly entertaining intense & suspenseful movie which somehow fell short to my expectation due to combination of unconvincing performance of some cast, poor CGI and unrealistic moving time towards the end. However it did have some entertaining action albeit rather brief, plus a rather layered mystery of the culprit & motives. The film was released in Taiwan in September 2025 but did not seem to be a big hit there, so perhaps it could be a streaming success. Not sure about audience views yet, but I noticed it was already Top 10 in Indonesia. So if you are looking for great entertaining movie with similar plot, this might not be to your liking (I personally felt the Japanese movie also available on Netflix was better). But if you just want to find out, you are welcome to give it a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
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