Just as in his début The Man from Island West, Hang has with a small crew succeeded in making a charming film filled with subtle emotional twists.A small island on the south coast of Taiwan is dominated by a military garrison. The soldiers form a barrier against intruders who never come. The garrison becomes inert and the men get bored. The commander thinks up a William Tell-like game in which the soldiers have to shoot tins off the heads of the officers.The young soldier Aki is pursued by thoughts of his late commanding officer, Captain Huang, and is in love with the latter’s former girlfriend. Aki has Huang’s notebook filled with strange and disturbing drawings. He also occasionally hears the captain speaking. The commander has put Aki in charge of selling army rifles to local gangsters.Yisan, the soldier who had aimed badly and killed Huang now lives somewhere in the wilderness on the island. He is trying to find his girlfriend Yihui but doesn’t know she is dead. Yisan’s father is confused and looks everywhere for his son. He finds a surrogate in the form of Bodo, a boy who acts as middleman in the illegal arms trade. The strange events pile up.Bodo balances on the boundary between fantasy and reality. The ‘reality’ is dominated (literally and metaphorically) by desertion. The fantasy side of the film is expressed in the loaded choice of locations. The title refers to a nickname for Taiwan, literally ‘treasure island’ and the island in the film symbolises Taiwan itself. There are many references in the film to the country’s military past.
