Taiwanese director Fu Changfeng’s (符昌鋒) The Shooting of 319 (幻術, “Deception”), which revisits the shooting of then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on March 19, 2004, the eve of the 2004 presidential election, opens in theaters on Friday.
The movie trailer bills it as “the nation’s first political thriller” and promises to “blow the minds” of audiences.
The film is not allegorical. Actors portray the politicians central to the 2004 presidential election, including Chen, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Lu, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
Photo: Wu Wan-ting, Taipei Times
The trailer shows a recreated scene of the shooting, as well as a scene portraying Lee, lying on a bed surrounded by men in suits and raising an index finger to indicate his support for Chen, who had come out on top in the Central Election Commission’s raffle that year and was candidate No. 1 on the ballot.
While the story of alleged shooter Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄) is recounted in the movie, the plot includes a “mysterious shooter” named “A-Bu” (阿布), the trailer shows.
The trailer, which juxtaposes footage of an actor playing former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) with what appears to be the office of former premier Lee Huan (李煥), promises that the movie’s viewers will be taken on a journey through “30 years of Taiwanese politics.”
Several questions surrounding the “319 shooting” remain unanswered to this day, even though Taiwanese-American forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺) was brought in to investigate the incident.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) believes it was a case of attempted assassination, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) believes it was a ruse orchestrated by the DPP to influence the election.
Although the film has been promoted as an “experimental” approach and “a marriage between fiction and facts,” the trailer contains slogans such as: “Police say Chen Yi-hsiung alone did it... Do you believe that?” and “Many magic tricks could not be debunked ... until now.”
Lee Teng-hui is portrayed by veteran actor Shih Feng (石峰), while Bobby Dou (竇智孔) plays Soong and Husky (陳家逵) plays Chen.
Wang Yan-chun (王燕軍), Lee Teng-hui’s office director, has threatened legal action if the film implies that Lee participated in planning the shooting.
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