Synopsis:
A young woman named Tum was laid off from work during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. She comes home that day to find a mysterious instant-noodle box full of money on her doorstep. Before she decides what to do with it, two scary men turn up to demand the money, and before long, Tum finds herself caught in the middle of a thrilling and heavily misunderstood brawl between gangsters who rig boxing matches, corrupt businessmen, and bumbling cops. In the best black comedy tradition, it doesn’t take long for the bodies to pile up and the situation to spin out of control.
My impressions:
Originally released in Thailand as “Ruang Talok 69” (Thai for “Funny Story Six-Nine”), 6ixtynin9 is one of the first black comedies ever made in Thailand, and today remains one of the finest and, in my opinion, vastly underrated. Similar to the hapless protagonists in Coen Brothers’ movies, Tum is forced to deal with one predicament after another, each one more absurd than the last. After accidentally killing the first two thugs, Tum hatches a plan to escape with the loot, and runs into more mishaps that turn her into a near-serial killer by the end of the movie. There is a lot of blood and violence, but the scenes are so tastefully shot that I can’t imagine anyone will feel offended. Also, none of the violence in this movie is gratuitous: situations become violent as a confluence of bad luck and desperate actions, not as a result of Tum turning into a cold-blooded killer.
Synopsis:
A young woman named Tum was laid off from work during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. She comes home that day to find a mysterious instant-noodle box full of money on her doorstep. Before she decides what to do with it, two scary men turn up to demand the money, and before long, Tum finds herself caught in the middle of a thrilling and heavily misunderstood brawl between gangsters who rig boxing matches, corrupt businessmen, and bumbling cops. In the best black comedy tradition, it doesn’t take long for the bodies to pile up and the situation to spin out of control.
My impressions:
Originally released in Thailand as “Ruang Talok 69” (Thai for “Funny Story Six-Nine”), 6ixtynin9 is one of the first black comedies ever made in Thailand, and today remains one of the finest and, in my opinion, vastly underrated. Similar to the hapless protagonists in Coen Brothers’ movies, Tum is forced to deal with one predicament after another, each one more absurd than the last. After accidentally killing the first two thugs, Tum hatches a plan to escape with the loot, and runs into more mishaps that turn her into a near-serial killer by the end of the movie. There is a lot of blood and violence, but the scenes are so tastefully shot that I can’t imagine anyone will feel offended. Also, none of the violence in this movie is gratuitous: situations become violent as a confluence of bad luck and desperate actions, not as a result of Tum turning into a cold-blooded killer.
The movie is tightly scripted, and even though the focus is on the characters and not on dialogues, there are still some memorable lines. The acting is good throughout, especially Lalita Punyopas in the role of Tum. She renders the transformation of Tum, from a disillusioned white-collar worker at the beginning who even tried to commit suicide, into a confident free spirit with renewed hope in life at the end, in a wholly captivating and convincing manner. What makes the movie shine most is the superb sense of black humor. When Tum climbs inside a trunk in the store to test whether it would fit the dead bodies in her room, or when a thug sent to kill Tum breaks down in tears when a radio song reminds him of his dead mother (who, incidentally, died from in a very unlikely and very funny way that you’ll have to find out yourself), we can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Some critics have likened the director Ratanaruang (who is famous in the West now thanks to Palm Pictures releasing his 2004 indie hit Last Life in the Universe overseas) to Quentin Tarantino, but aside from the fact that both directors definitely have a knack for portraying gangsters as real human beings, I find Ratanaruang’s brand of humor more similar to the Coen brothers than Tarantino: Ratanaruang seems to relish putting normal people in absurd situations and see how they react, while Tarantino’s characters are anything but “normal,” and the absurd situations they often find themselves in are often the result of their own actions, not bad luck.
Although some coincidences in the movie are a bit too far-fetched, even for an absurdist comedy, overall the movie feels plausible and all its characters’ motives well-explained. All in all, 6ixtynin9 is a wonderful film that makes some pithy observations on the nature of isolation in our modern society and what greed can do to people. The English subtitles in this DVD release do not capture all the nuances of the Thai vernacular; but since the movie is more focused on action than on words, and the modern message it conveys is universal, non-Thai viewers can definitely enjoy the film. I heartily recommend 6ixtynin9 to fans of quality Thai films and black comedies in general – especially fans of the Coen brothers’ superb Blood Simple, which this movie fondly reminds me of.