6ixtynin9 (2005)

Waste of time

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The last couple of years, Thailand has been outputting some interesting films, both commercial flicks and art-house endeavors. On the good side of the art-house fence, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (gotta love Thai names) has been one of the front runners and main flagships of the Thai film industry. Ruang Talok 69 is one of his earlier films and probably the one that made many heads turn his way.I've been on to Ratanaruang ever since I watched Last Life In The Universe, a collaboration with Asano and Doyle (at a later time successfully repeated in Invisible Waves). The film left a permanent impression and since then I've been on the look-out for more Ratanaruang's films. When I finally came across Ruang Talok 69 I didn't have to think twice before checking it out.I'm usually a bit apprehensive about older films of directors I like, especially when I was introduced to their more recent work first. These films are often a little less polished, sometimes just downright dire and dull (it happened to Tsai Ming-Liang). In that sense, Ruang Talok 69 was a very interesting surprise. While it does not equal Ratanaruang's later work, it stands very well on its own and manages to keep a fresh appeal.That said, the movie does start off a little slow. Tum is a rather dull woman who crawls back home after being fired from her work just a little earlier. Her place is as dull as she is and up until that point, nothing much interesting seems to be happening. That changes when a little box with loads of cash is left at her doorstep. An ideal opportunity for Tum to make a fresh start.Sadly, things won't go easily for Tum. In no time, two scruffy looking guys are knocking on her door searching for the money. When they both fall dead on Tum's floor only five minutes after entering her home, Tum suddenly turns from a dull-downed woman into a woman with a plan. Money does strange things to people.From there on, the film slips into an endless spiral of bad luck and coincidence, adding a healthy streak of dark humor and some amusing plot twists, ending up in a sprawling finale with bodies littered all over the place. Most of the action takes place in Tum's apartment, where boxes keep stacking up in order to dump the ever growing pile of dead people that end up inside her house.It's this streak of black humor that adds a lot of flavor to the film. Without it, the films would've been a little plain. Luckily Ratanaruang has an excellent sense of humor (without becoming too bonkers - Thai humor can be pretty freaky). Top scene is probably the blow job scene, which is a lot less obscene than it actually sounds.Visually Ratanaruang has everything under control. Nice and colorful settings (a typical Thai film look in other words) and some interesting camera tricks often mimicking the movement of characters. The film is not as polished or brilliant as Doyle's work, but I guess nobody would be expecting that. It's still a very clean and solid looking film.More praise goes out to the soundtrack. While littered with funky Thai music, the darker scenes are scored with some very interesting tracks. I've found little so far about the composer of the soundtrack, but there's some major influence of Kenji Kawai's work in Ghost in the Shell. Not something you'd expect in a film like this, and the association is a little weird at times, but it does work wonders.Some very interesting ambient tracks are placed underneath the key scenes, featuring instruments almost directly lifted from the GitS soundtrack. It adds heaps to the atmosphere and already defined Ratanaruang's preference for soothing (dark) ambient to score his films.In the end, Ruang Talok 69 is a very fun ride, nicely shot and awesomely scored, presented with a great sense of humor and key scenes that are wonderfully executed. It starts off a little slow, the pace is pretty sluggish at first, but as the film continues it keeps getting better and better. Another hit for Ratanaruang, who's easily my favorite Thai director to date. 4.0*/5.0*

1st watched 11/29/2005, 8 out of 10(Dir:Pen-Ek Ratanaruang): Wonderfully twisted tale of a woman who loses her job, finds a package of money in front of her doorstep that was intended for someone else, kills the two mafia folks who are trying to get the money from her, stashes them in her apartment and that's just the first 15 minutes!! At first, she's just a pawn in a situation that she wasn't supposed to be a part of, but as each person gets killed coming after the money, she becomes the aggressor and wants to keep the money badly so that she can start life anew in another country. This movie is thrilling, exhilarating, comic, tragic, frightening and full of twists and turns. The woman in the middle of everything is played superbly by Lalita Panyopas as she gets deeper and deeper into her situation and becomes more and more hardlined. As she cleans the blood from her apartment after each killing she breaks down only once, and then gives into her obsession completely during a wonderful scene where she lets her best friend see what's been going on in her life lately as she dumps the bodies in a nearby lake. This is one of those "one of a kind" foreign movies that grips you more and more as it goes on. Americans; please don't be frightened by subtitles, the blood, or the fact that we get to see a couple of individuals urinate into a toilet!! Let's grow up!! This is a great thriller from Thailand that should be enjoyed by a lot of people, not just by those who speak the same language and know the way things are in the country it was made.

6ixtynin9 (or Ruang talok 69) was a pretty good dark comedy/drama. I believe this is the first film I have had the pleasure of seeing from Thailand and they made a great first impression on me. Usually, when watching foreign movies, they do not come across that great as they lose something in the translation, I think. This was not the case for 6ixtynin9. I got every subtle joke and I was able to follow the increasingly complex storyline without a problem. I can not say that about the last foreign film I have seen, Sex and Lucia.The story starts off when a woman, Tum, is laid off from her job. She returns home without a job or enough money for food, etc. She soon finds a mysterious box on her doorstep. Upon opening it, she discovers that it contains $25,000 and soon after, the two men that left it there by mistake, came back looking for it. As you can probably guess, everything was not on the up and up. Anyhow, Tum tells them she has not seen the box. The two men do not believe her and beat her up, then search the apartment. Once their box is found, Tum decides she is not giving it up and, ultimately, ends up with 2 dead henchmen.Throughout the movie, more and more members of Thailand's organized crime families get involved and this is where small twists and unexpected coincidences begin to happen. You can see Tum becoming more and more callous throughout the day. This is also where her character began to grow on me.Overall, this movie gave off a sort of Quentin Tarantino feel, more specifically Reservoir Dogs is the closest movie I've seen to it that I can compare it to, although much more subtle. It has it's share of blood, but nothing like Quentin would come up with. Even the English title of this movie makes sense after watching it. The whole problem with the box being left at the wrong doorstep is due to the fact that her apartment number, 6, is not nailed on well and keeps falling to look like apartment 9. This movie was very well done and I can highly recommend it, if you can deal with the subtitles. 8/10

I had to watch this film too many times for a film studies course and by the end of the course I was so fed up with it. However, I do think it's a very interesting film...the way the story goes and the way it was made. It definitely is very different from other Thai movies and personally, I think that's why it never made it big in Thailand. I thought the editing was great and the filming technique makes it more realistic and closer to everyday life. Plus the plot surely suited the situations within the country at the time. As for the story I really liked the idea of how everything turned out the total opposite and upside down just cuz of the poorly attached room number "6". I never thought it would be showed in other countries, let alone it gaining foreign fans. I'm glad other people appreciate a small production Thai movie as much as I did.