6ixtynin9 (2005)

Best movie of this year hands down!

To me, this movie is perfection.

Redundant and unnecessary.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

6ixtynin9 (Ruang talok 69) is without doubt a film of acquired tastes, a pic that's hard to recommend with any great confidence. That is, though, unless you have a kink for violent black comedy crime movies, where the narrative drive is quirky and fulsome, even winsome in some regards.Story finds Lalita Panyopas (excellent) as Tum, a lady who has just been laid off from work courtesy of lots being drawn. Feeling desperate and at the end of her tether, she's amazed to find on her doorstep a noodle box with $25,000 in it. A gift from the gods? Not quite! And once some shifty gangster types come knocking at her door, nothing will ever be the same again...There's a whole ream of films this draws from, but favourably so, especially since the films often referenced in reviews are pretty tasty in themselves. Yet this is no hack job, director and writer Pen-Ek Ratanaruang has crafted a splendid pot of Thai neo-noir curry, putting his own stamp on things, imbuing the pic with his own flourishes, such as showing acts of violence off screen! Via a shadow, a splatter of blood, or a pair of legs going limp.The characters who inhabit this world are gloriously strange or purely deranged. The henchmen are from a Thai boxing club, garishly attired in bright red clobber (film is packed with pronounced reds), one of them is even deaf, while their boss is a bit off the map, likes to have one of his charges massage him with is feet. There's a phone sex pest, who ends up being a real key component to how things pan out, and one of the baddies reveals tears and a most bizarre death in the family!It's all deliciously off kilter, even as the bodies pile up, the black comedy tongue is prodding away at the inside of the cheek. But ultimately its noir heart is with the vagary of fate and of the coincidences that pitch our everyday woman (she's no moll or assassin type) into a bloody and bonkers world. All of which has hinged, ironically, on a number badly screwed to an apartment door! 8/10

6ixtynin9 - 1999 This one is a bit hard to tag, it is sort of a dark comedy mixed in with plenty of violence and a neo noir feel.A young woman working in a Bangkok bank is laid off. The woman, Lalita Panyopas, is the sole breadwinner for her family who live in a country village. She is at a loss as to what to do next. Thoughts of suicide enter her mind as she ponders her future.She returns to her small apartment to sleep on her problems. Her apartment, number 6, has a loose number that slips down and become a 9 when the door is slammed. This is of course is going to cause Miss Panyopas, a ride into the dark side.The next morning, Panyopas opens the door to take out the trash, she finds a cardboard box sealed with duct tape in front of the door. She picks it up and brings it inside. She grabs a knife and opens the box. Inside, there is $25,000 in cash. What is she to do? Keep it, or turn it into the police.A quick trip to the Police station ends that idea when she sees several people being tossed into the cells. She decides to keep the loot. There is soon a knock on the door. She answers and finds two thuggish looking gentlemen looking for a box that had been left in error. Panyopas says she knows nothing about it. The two smile, then give her a fist to the side of the head.A quick look around the apartment finds the cash. Panyopas is not inclined to giving up the loot. She grabs a flowerpot and brains the one thug. The other goes for her and they struggle on the bed with the thug strangling her. As it so happens, the knife Panyopas had used to open the box is still lying on the bed. She grabs it up and spears the swine with it. Panyopas now has two dead bodies on her hands. What to do? She hides one in a storage trunk and the other in the closet.Now we find out about the cash. It is the rake off from a crooked boxing racket. Every week, the cash is dropped at apartment 9 for the Thai Mafia. The men this week making the drop had mistaken Panyopas' apartment for the drop place.The boss of the boxing racket, Black Phomtong, soon gets a call from the Mafia about the non-delivery of the week's cut. Needless to say Phomtong is at a loss to explain this, so he promises to straighten the matter out. He sends two more thugs to look into the matter. The Mafia likewise sends a man to check up on things.A Policeman who lives in the building happens upon the Mafia type. Guns are pulled and presto change-o, we have two more bodies littering Panyopas' apartment. She goes out and buys several more trunks to stash the bodies in. She decides that she should leave the country sharpish like. She always wanted to visit the UK.She needs a passport and a visa pronto like. She has heard of a place where an under the table passport and papers can be had for a price. It turns out that the establishment is a sideline of the boxing racket outfit. This of course will enter into play later on.Panyopas has the passport in the works, a ticket to London bought. Now all she needs to do is dispose of the stiffs. She enlists the help of her best friend, Tasanawalia Ongartittichai. Panyopas needs to borrow her pickup to move the corpses. She is going to dump them is a black water lake just out of town.While this is going on, the racket boss, Phomtong, has discovered that Panyopas is the one who has his cash. He details one of his henchmen to kill her if she returns to get the passport. He is going to a meeting with the Mafia boss at Panyopas' apartment building.Panyopas and her friend stop to grab the passport. Pal, Ongartittichai, is killed by the man assigned to kill Panyopas. Panyopas, who is by now is becoming used to bloodshed, in turn kills the gunman.Meanwhile, back at the ranch, er, apartment, the racket boss and the Mafia man are having a healthy dispute. Each is blaming the other over the missing cash. Guns are again produced and soon there are 6 more bodies piled up.Panyopas returns home to find the new stiffs. She has had enough. She pulls the cash from the hiding place where it was stashed, and hits the road. She takes the cash and dumps it all in the lake. It has caused her nothing but trouble. Panyopas then drives off to return to her country village. She has had enough of the big city.The misread apartment number bit has been used in several, mostly comedy films before. The story starts with a definite comic feel to it, but grows progressively darker as the film unwinds. The killing of Panyopas' friend, Ongartittichai, was particularly surprising. This is the kind of film one could see the likes of Quentin Tarantino or the Cohen Brothers making.I liked it.

Although not one of the newer films, 69 turned out to be one of my favorites of this year's Cleveland International Film Festival. Funny and clever without veering into being overly wacky. You've seen this kind of set-up before but you've never seen such consequences! This is a top-notch black comedy.Possible spoiler below: The film is vastly entertaining despite one nagging question that loomed in my head as I watched events unfold: Tum, the next time a million baht shows up on your doorstep - invest in a hammer and a nail! Poor girl, it could have spared you a lot of hassle!

I recently watched this movie in a local theatre after hearing the director could be considdered "Thailand´s Quentin Tarantino". I was expecting a fast-paced crime story with sharp dialogues and a lot of gunfire, like Lock Stock and 2 smoking barrels or Pulp Fiction. But 6ixtynin9 isn´t like that at all. It´s not a Hollywood picture, it´s a lot slower, the dialogues are quite short, it´s quite stylish though. The story could easily be used for a Hollywood flic though; a girl finds al lot of cash in front of her door. Ofcourse the bad guys come looking for it and from there everything gets worse and worse. The movie ain´t bad but it could have been a lot better, the plot is quite good but the jokes, the acting, it´s just too slow for my taste.