The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, as the famous goes. Prioritising saving lives where you can rather than risk spreading yourself too thin and not helping anyone as a result may be a sensible decision. But what if you or a loved are among those who’ve been deprioritised? Like many things, now it’s not just theory but here right in front of you and victims are real people not just anonymous numbers, it looks quite different.
At least, that’s how it is for A-Ren (Austin Lin), a brash bomb disposal expert. Though he disarmed a bomb in a cinema, another one went off across the road in a department store. The bomber had warned them that might happen, but A-Ren’s commanding officer Liu (Wang Bo-Chieh) convinced him they were probably bluffing. They were told there were two more bombs, one located in their command centre, and the other in the department store, and given a choice. Save the people in the department store by heroically blowing themselves up, or choose to save themselves even though this time they’re in the minority.
Three years later, A-Ren has never forgiven himself, or Liu, for the bomb going off. He’s quit the police and though he’s married fellow officer Huang Xin (Vivian Sung), they never had a wedding and still haven’t been on honeymoon. His guilt is compounded by the fact that he’s been feted as a hero even though he knows he’s directly responsible for everyone who died in the department store. He gets a shot at redemption when the train he’s travelling on returning home after a memorial service for victims of the bombing receives a bomb threat, but at the same time he fears the eventual exposure of what really happened three years ago and is too ashamed to get his mind fully on the job.
On the other hand, it’s true that, ironically, no one on the train has been able to move on from the incident. All of them are mired in their grief and confusion, while looking for someone to blame. Needing to solve the case quickly, the police named a random victim with a criminal past as the bomber rather than admit they didn’t know who did it, making the police themselves a legitimate target for the resentment of the victims’ families given their cavalier attitude to life and death. Liu reminded A-Ren that the policemen in the command centre had families too, as if the people in the department store didn’t or that having a family made their lives weigh more, while Huang Xin was there too further influencing their decision and feeding into A-Ren’s guilt wondering if he was just selfish and made a choice to save her at the expense of the lives of a large number of people he didn’t know.
The bomber essentially gives him the same choice again, putting two bombs on two trains and leaving A-Ren with a binary choice of choosing to sacrifice one or the other to see if he will make the same hypocritical decision again in opting to save the minority because he is among them. Of course, they try a number of other high-risk strategies to disarm both bombs and/or evacuate passengers, but the bomber leaves them with little choice other than to accept the fact that one of the bombs has to go off. A-Ren and Liu can either blow themselves up figuratively by admitting that they chose to sacrifice the lives of the department store victims, or they can save themselves by blowing up the other train.
During a train derailment incident, Liu had cited his greater good philosophy in prioritising passengers who remained outside the tunnel rather than those trapped in the carriages inside, but he perhaps he was wrong to do so and should either have made more of an effort to help everyone or refrained from announcing his decision to let some of the victims die live on television. But then again, the victims’ families are also torn now they are directly involved with some leaning towards saving themselves rather the passengers on the other train whom they don’t after all even know. A-Ren, meanwhile, is in a race against time to restore his sense of integrity by disarming the bombs inside his mind to cure the lingering trauma of the department store bombing as the train rockets forward with only him between it and certain destruction.
96 Minutes screened as part of this year’s LEAFF.
Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 