96 Minutes

There is a specific kind of anxiety that comes with hearing a train door hiss shut when you’re not entirely sure you’re on the right platform, but that’s nothing compared to the sweaty-palmed dread Hung Tzu-Hsuan cooks up in 96 Minutes. It feels like we’ve been waiting for Taiwan to truly stake its claim in the high-octane blockbuster arena, and with this project, the director behind the scrappy, neon-soaked The Scoundrels finally gets to play with a massive toy box. I watched this while nursing a slightly warm can of Apple Sidra, which felt appropriately Taiwanese for the occasion, even if the carbonation was a bit too aggressive for the tension onscreen.

The setup is classic "Speed-on-a-train" logic, but with a modern emotional weight that feels very much of the 2020s. We have Austin Lin as Song, a former bomb disposal expert who is trying to have a normal life with his fiancée, Huang Xin (played by the reliably charming Vivian Sung). Naturally, their romantic getaway is interrupted by the discovery of a bomb on their high-speed rail. Parallel to this, we get a somewhat soap-operatic subplot involving Edison Wang as a disgraced physics teacher trying to chase down his wife, Ting Juan (Eleven Yao). It’s a lot of plates to spin at 300 kilometers per hour.

Propulsive Stakes and Digital Vistas

What struck me immediately was how Hung Tzu-Hsuan handles the geography of the train. In contemporary action, it’s so easy to get lost in a blur of CGI motion, but here, the cinematography by Jimmy Wong keeps us grounded in the cramped, sterile reality of the carriages. You feel the weight of the metal and the claustrophobia of being trapped in a bullet-shaped tube with nowhere to run.

The film leans heavily into the "Virtual Production" tech that has become the gold standard since The Mandalorian. Instead of just green-screening the windows, the production used massive LED walls to simulate the passing landscape. It makes a difference; the light hitting Austin Lin’s face as the train flickers through tunnels feels authentic, avoiding that weird "floating head" effect that plagues so many modern streaming releases. The physics teacher subplot is a bit like adding a side of broccoli to a perfectly good steak—unnecessary, but I suppose it rounds out the meal. While I appreciated the attempt to ground the stakes in a failing marriage, I found myself tapping my foot whenever we cut away from the bomb-defusing tension.

The Craft of the Crunch

As an action fan, I’m always looking for "the crunch"—that physical sensation that a stunt actually hurt. Hung Tzu-Hsuan has always had a knack for "dirty" choreography, and he brings that sensibility here. There’s a sequence in the galley car that reminded me of the best parts of the John Wick era: it’s frantic, utilizes the environment, and doesn’t rely on a thousand cuts to hide the lack of stunt training. Austin Lin sheds his "boy next door" image quite effectively here; he looks exhausted, sweaty, and genuinely terrified.

The score by Chris Hou is a relentless pulse that occasionally threatens to drown out the dialogue, but in a film titled 96 Minutes, subtle sound design was never really the goal. It’s designed to keep your heart rate somewhere north of 100 bpm. I did find myself wondering if the film would have benefited from a strictly real-time gimmick (the actual runtime is closer to two hours), but the pacing is so relentless that the discrepancy didn't bother me for long.

Stuff You Didn't Notice

One of the more interesting aspects of the production was the sheer scale of the set. To get the action right, the crew built a 1:1 replica of a high-speed rail carriage, which is reportedly the first time a Taiwanese production has gone to such lengths for a practical set. It shows. When things start to go sideways—and they go very sideways—the destruction feels tactile.

There’s also a bit of a "meta" conversation happening here about Taiwan’s place in the global film market. Released in an era where we are inundated with franchise fatigue and superhero saturation, 96 Minutes feels like a statement of intent. It’s a mid-budget thriller that looks like a high-budget one, proving that you don't need a multiverse to make a ticking clock feel meaningful. It’s also worth noting the casting of Lee Lee-Zen as Li Jie; he brings a veteran gravity to the film that balances out the younger energy of Kent Tsai Fan-Hsi.

I’ve seen a lot of these "trapped in a vehicle" movies—from Train to Busan to the recent Bullet Train—and while 96 Minutes doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it spins it with incredible Ferguson-level intensity. It’s a film that understands its assignment: keep the audience leaning forward until the credits roll. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to check under your seat the next time you board a commute, which is perhaps the highest praise an action-thriller can receive.

Ultimately, 96 Minutes is a win for contemporary Taiwanese cinema and a blast for anyone who misses the era of straightforward, high-stakes action. It’s got enough heart to make you care if the train explodes and enough technical wizardry to make the spectacle worth the price of admission. It’s a propulsive, well-oiled machine that occasionally gets bogged down by its own sentimentality, but once the fuse is lit, you’ll be too busy holding your breath to care. Grab a cold drink, ignore the logic of the physics teacher for a moment, and just enjoy the ride.