The Taiwanese thriller drama series 96 Minutes begins with former bomb disposal expert Song Kang-Ren and his fiancé, Huang Xin, returning home on a high-speed train from a memorial service. A-Ren was considered a hero for defusing a bomb at a cinema hall and saving lives, although he blamed himself for not being able to save those who died in an explosion at a department store right next to the hall. It had been three years, and the survivors as well as the families of the victims had come together to hold a memorial service at the scene of the incident. Everything went as planned, but things took a dark turn when Captain Li-Jie informed A-Ren that he’d been receiving threatening texts that suggested there were bombs on the train. The captain wasn’t sure if it was just an evil prank or if they were actually in danger. Although it soon became clear that the perpetrator planned on exploding two trains simultaneously. So who was behind it? And what did they want to prove?
Spoiler Alert
Was Yang Li-Hui the perpetrator?
A-Hui was a survivor of the department store explosion, and he couldn’t get over the trauma of losing his little nephew, Xiao Kai, in the incident. He wanted to bring justice to his nephew, so he figured it was time to punish those who’d failed to do their job. He blamed A-Ren and Captain Li for not carrying out their duties to perfection, and he wanted them to suffer. As the story unfolds, we discover that A-Hui wasn’t the perpetrator. He was being instructed by someone else, who had devised the elaborate plan. A-Hui was simply a motivated player in his grand plan. He had also suffered from burn wounds, and his life had changed drastically after the incident. He noticed how people looked at him with disgust and fear. Kids were terrified of him, and he mostly had to hide behind hooded clothes and silently live in pain. He’d told his sister that he planned on avenging Xiao Kai, and although she’d tried to stop him, he didn’t pay her any heed. When he came across his sister, Ting-Juan, on the train, he was furious; he wondered why she’d boarded the train, and attempted to force her to leave, and that resulted in a small explosion. A-Hui had confessed that he’d planted the bombs, and he instructed A-Ren and Li-Jie to come forward, but to his surprise, the ex-bomb disposal expert and his captain weren’t on the train he’d boarded. A-Hui had a detonator in his hand, and when his sister tried to talk him out of it, he threatened to explode the train. It became evident that A-Hui wasn’t the one who’d planted the bombs, especially when he confessed to Ting-Juan that he didn’t know that the plan would also hurt others. When Ting-Juan told him that she didn’t blame him for her son’s death, he broke down. A-Hui was with Xiao Kai at the store on the night of the accident, and although it wasn’t really his fault, he blamed himself for taking his nephew to the store, and especially for carrying him upstairs. His sister reminded him that there were many kids as young as Xiao Kai on the train, and he must think of how his actions could affect the innocent. A-Hui was almost convinced, but then he received a text, and once again he turned furious. He asked his sister why the ones who were responsible for Xiao Kai’s death were ‘safe and alive,’ and he threatened to detonate the train if Song Kang-Ren and Li-Jie kept hiding. A-Ren negotiated with A-Hui; he agreed to confess the truth, and in return, the young man promised not to detonate and allow everyone on the train to get off.
What secret were A-Ren and Li-Jie hiding?
Halfway into 96 Minutes, we discover the actual reason why A-Ren struggled with his conscience. As we’d witnessed at the very beginning of the film, A-Ren had successfully disposed of the bomb in the cinema hall, and Captain Li-Jie also had his men clear out the area for safety. Just when they thought they had dealt with the threat, they discovered that the person who’d planted the bomb wanted to play mind games with them. The threat wasn’t really over; instead, A-Ren and Li-Jie were offered the chance to decide if they wanted to save themselves or the hundreds of people at the department store. If they chose to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, then the bomb in the cinema hall would go off; otherwise, the department store would explode. The perpetrator had reminded Captain Li that he’d once mentioned after a train explosion that they weren’t heroes, and it wasn’t possible for them to save everyone, but they always made it a point to rescue the majority. In the situation they were in, the captain and A-Ren were the minority, and those at the department store were the majority. He wondered if the captain would honor his statement even when his own life was at risk. That night, A-Ren and Li-Jie chose themselves over the innocent civilians. A-Ren wasn’t so sure about the choice, but he ultimately made the decision because his fiancé, Huang Xin, was also in the movie theater, and he couldn’t imagine parting ways with her.
The choice, of course, continued to haunt A-Ren. A-Ren hated the fact that he was considered a hero for defusing the bomb at the movie theater. It wasn’t easy for Li-Jie either, but he had convinced himself that they didn’t really have a choice. He didn’t know if the bomber was telling the truth, so he figured that they must defuse the bomb that was in front of them (at the movie theater) to ensure that both establishments didn’t explode. A-Hui wasn’t satisfied with the answer; he insinuated that the cops knew beforehand what they were dealing with. Captain Li later admitted to A-Ren that the person who was held responsible for the bombing, Lai Bing-Cheng, wasn’t the actual perpetrator, and therefore the allegation that they were informed about the explosion was false. Lai Bing-Cheng was simply the scapegoat; he had a criminal record, so they pinned the blame on him. It was quite evident that the actual bomber was still alive and that he’d been using A-Hui to execute his plan.
Who was the perpetrator?
During 96 Minutes’ ending, we discover that the perpetrator was the husband of one of the victims of a train bombing. She was a dancer who’d traveled all across the globe to perform. He had come to the conclusion that it was because of Captain Li that he’d lost his wife. Li Jie had asked his men to focus on saving the majority of people on the train and abandon the carriage where only a handful of people were stuck. His wife was among those people who were denied a second chance at life. He pretended to be the husband of a victim who died in the department store to blend in with the crowd, and he was also the one who’d accused A-Ren’s mother (who was also on the train) of trying to defend her son even though he was a ‘murderer.’ Amidst the chaos, Huang Xin (A-Ren’s fiancée and a police officer) announced that if they stopped the train, then the other train would explode; they’d figured that they had to keep both trains in motion. She made it clear that they were trying their best to figure out a solution, but if the crowd lost their calm, then their jobs would become all the more difficult.
Meanwhile, A-Ren decided to jump into the other train to have a word with A-Hui and deal with the bomb. That meant leaving behind his fiancée and his mother, but he figured he didn’t have a choice. Huang Xin didn’t stop him because she knew that if he didn’t go, his decision would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. Some of the passengers managed to get off when the train slowed down a little to catch up with the other train so that A-Ren could jump in. Some ended up getting bruised and wounded in the process. Meanwhile, A-Ren managed to make it to the other train, thanks to A-Hui’s sister, Yang Ting-Juan, who offered him a hand. The perpetrator had told A-Hui that if he allowed A-Ren to defuse the bomb, people would remember him as a hero, and they would forget the mistake he’d made in the past. So, he asked A-Hui to stop A-Ren, and he promised that his sister wouldn’t die. Of course, the perpetrator was lying; there was no way he could save Ting-Juan from the explosion, and anyway, there was no denying that it would result in the loss of innocent lives again! A-Ren and A-Hui got into a physical fight, and although A-Ren tried to hold on to A-Hui when he almost fell off the train, it was impossible. Before A-Hui chose to let go of A-Ren’s hand, he handed him the detonator and asked him to protect his sister. Upon examining the detonator, A-Ren realized it was fake. The perpetrator had convinced A-Hui that he had immense power to cause real damage so that his threats would seem very real. A-Ren found the bomb on the train, and he figured he could defuse it, but he soon realized that if he did so, the bomb on the train his fiancée and his mother were on would go off.
The perpetrator had already choked Captain Li-Jie dead, and Huang Xin couldn’t help but wonder why he was punishing the rest. He explained that all cops deserved to die, and therefore his revenge didn’t really end with Li-Jie. He had dedicated his life to avenging his wife, and he was ready to go to any length to experience a sense of justice. A-Ren begged Huang Xin to defuse the bomb on her train, but she refused to do it. He decided to cut the tripwire and bring the luggage that had the bomb to the last carriage and evacuate the passengers to the first carriage. That way, even if the bomb went off, the people on the train would be saved.
What happened to A-Ren?
A-Ren managed to carry the luggage to the last carriage, but the stab wound inflicted by A-Hui made it impossible for A-Ren to even attempt to make it to the front carriage. He’d been bleeding profusely, but he refused to stop until he was sure that he had done his best to protect the civilians on the train. Huang Xin was devastated when A-Ren informed her that he wouldn’t make it. She, at first, refused to defuse the bomb, because she couldn’t imagine living without him, but A-Ren begged her to complete her final task and apologized since he couldn’t ‘run anymore.’ He promised that he would be forever with her. In the end, Huang Xin defused the bomb, resulting in A-Ren’s death. The last compartments were destroyed, but the first few, where the passengers were moved to, were safe. A-Ren’s mission was successful. As a bomb disposal expert, his priority had always been saving lives, and while the guilt of failing to stop the department store blast had almost consumed him, in the end, he finally got the redemption he desperately needed.
The perpetrator’s mission of reducing A-Ren to a villain failed; his sacrifice would always be interpreted as a heroic deed. But then again, he succeeded in inflicting pain on his loved ones. His objective was to prove how people such as Captain Li would react in critical circumstances if their life was under threat, whether they would choose to save the majority even if it meant dying in the process. His own wife was considered ‘collateral damage’ in the train rescue operation, and he couldn’t come to terms with it. He wanted those in power to realize that every life mattered. But then again, considering A-Ren and Captain Li knew that they could lose their lives any day on the job (even in the cinema hall they were mentally prepared for things to not work out), logically, the perpetrator’s objective wasn’t just to kill them but to test if they would carry out their job as usual if the lives of their loved ones would be on the line. The perpetrator was caught, thanks to the invisible stamp that Captain Li used to mark him when they got into a scuffle (he’d gotten the stamp from A-Hui’s brother-in-law, Liu Kai). When Huang Xin found the captain’s body, she noticed that he was holding the stamp. Later, they used UV light to find the stamp marks on the killer, and that was how the perpetrator was caught on the train. When Liu Kai grabbed hold of him and punched him, the perpetrator begged him to kill him already, since his life had lost its meaning the day his wife died. Liu Kai stopped because he realized that the perpetrator was in extreme pain and whatever he did was his way of trying to make sense of his misery.
In 96 Minutes’ ending, Liu Kai paid his respects to his son; it was long overdue, but somehow he couldn’t make himself do it. But when his life was in danger, his only regret was not taking out time for his son, and he was resolute that he would do it if he survived. The ending also suggests that Liu Kai and his wife had parted ways, but they were respectful of one another. Considering the perpetrator was caught, it is likely that he was sent to prison. Huang Xin was often reminded of A-Ren, and in the end, she texted him, stating ‘mission accomplished’. She perhaps tried to console herself thinking that although she’d lost the love of her life, they served a purpose far bigger than them.
What does the mid-credit suggest?
During the mid-credit scene, we witness the desk where the bomber had spent years studying explosion techniques and came up with the bombing plan. It was New Year’s, and clearly there was someone in the room who was going through everything that the perpetrator had created. On the computer screen there was a tab of the video where the perpetrator spoke of his wife during the memorial service. Someone in a white shirt (as the reflection on the computer suggests) was loitering in the room; was he the perpetrator’s son? Did he figure he had to carry on the work that his father had started? Or was he someone who was deeply inspired by the bomber’s work (maybe he too had lost a loved one and resonated with the perp’s story) and had a personal vendetta against cops and wanted to use his method to teach them a lesson?
