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A Taiwanese film that effectively shows the beauty of Taiwan, Taiwan's official entry to the Academy Awards is definitely more worthy than its "substitute" status.  When looking back to the summer of 2007, Island Etude may be remembered as the directorial debut of famed cinematographer En Chen (who worked on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's classics City of Sadness and Good Men, Good Women), or as the highest-grossing Taiwanese film of the year. However, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution then came along and changed everything; not only did the espionage drama take over as Taiwan's highest-grossing Chinese film of the year, it got rejected by the Academy Awards for "not being Taiwanese enough", leaving Island Etude to become Taiwan's official entry to the 2008 Oscars. Despite its "substitute status", Island Etude is actually the perfect choice to represent the island nation: it's a beautifully-shot homage to the island's people, its sights, and the sport of bicycle riding that is thankfully free of any political views or pretentious art-house technique.First-time actor Tung Ming-Hsiang plays Ming, a young college student whose lifelong hearing problem causes him to communicate via slurred speech. Carrying a guitar on his back and lacking few concrete reasons, he decides to bike around the island of Taiwan by himself months before his college graduation...

Typically thieves enter a house, steal things and get out. This time an unsuspecting thief enters a home to steal as much as he can and instead is faced with an occupant inside the house. There is a woman within who is going to commit a murder. She is also about to set the place ablaze. The thief stops her and in the process the criminal becomes the one stopping a crime. The situation is connected to a case from some twenty years go.

Otomichi Takako (Koike Eiko) is a strong-minded detective. She joins in the investigation of the murder of a fortune teller’s entire family as a member of its mobile investigation unit. Although Takako is a female, she is the type of person who likes to win and will rush to a crime scene immediately when there is a case so that she will be assigned to the mobile investigation unit which conducts the initial investigations. But Hoshino Hideo (Abe Tsuyoshi), the detective partnered with her, is known for being a skirt chaser. When Takako curtly rejects his advances, she is abruptly treated indifferently. He also reports an important clue that she had found as his own achievement. This makes Takako shake with anger. To make matters worse, Hoshino orders Takako to act alone in a violation of rules. She has no choice but to do legwork on her own. As chance would have it, Takako locates the new address of men who are believed to be a gang of criminals and heads to the house. During the investigation, Nakata Kaeko (Nishida Naomi), a housewife who was a victim in a previous bag-snatching case, appears. Takako knows her. Kaeko is going through a hard time. She has to care for her elderly father, but is also the sole breadwinner instead of her unemployed husband, juggling two jobs as a nurse and part-time employee at a bar while raising two children. Unable to leave Kaeko alone after Kaeko talks about the emptiness she feels every day, Takako follows her. But she gets drugged with sleeping pills and kidnapped by the hidden criminal … … Meanwhile, former fellow detective Takizawa Tamotsu (Takahashi Katsumi) is unable to contact Takako and worries about her. He presses Hoshino for an answer but Hoshino does not confess the truth. He finally pins down an apartment from a small lead and breaks in with Hirajima Maki (Shinoda Mariko). However, they discover the body of the criminal who has died in cold blood down there. Takizawa tries to find new clues, but Takako’s own life is in danger with each passing moment