Parents' Guide to 96 Minutes

The promise of a ticking 96-minute emergency never quite lands. 96 Minutes stretches well beyond its supposed real-time urgency, padding the crisis with unnecessary exposition and overexplained emotional backstory. The film seems determined to spell everything out, connecting dots that audiences could easily connect themselves. For a movie built around the simple, primal terror of a bomb on a crowded train, it keeps insisting that the threat alone isn't enough. So it piles on trauma, twists, hidden motives, revelations instead of just trusting the suspense. The result is a thriller that feels busy rather than sharp. It was a major hit in Taiwan, and it's easy to see why it plays well as a high-stakes action ride, but placed next to something like Speed or Non-Stop, it doesn't push the genre forward or even sideways.

The action sequences are competently staged, and Po-Hung Lin as Song Kang Ren makes for a solid, watchable action lead. He runs, he bleeds, he throws himself into danger with conviction. There's a compelling idea lurking in the film, especially in moments like the live-streaming of the hostage situation, where the story briefly brushes against questions about spectacle and digital voyeurism. But instead of committing to that thread, the screenplay keeps multiplying villains and motivations until the structure feels overloaded. What could have been a tight, propulsive thriller turns into something that risks imploding under its own ambition, less like an elegant mystery and more like a machine trying to prove its own necessity.