Ruang talok 69
Tags: violence, murder

Plot synopsis:
Tum is a secretary working for a bank when the company is forced to shed staff. As the boss could not bear to select which staff to fire, he uses the Kau Cim to determine who must leave. Tum draws one of the unlucky numbers and is laid off. Back at her apartment building, she finds the elevator is out of order, and is somewhat bothered by a young man who is a little too helpful. She is nonetheless accommodating and friendly. Once alone, though, she envisions all kinds of suicidal scenarios, including drinking household cleaning chemicals or blowing her head off with a handgun.
Her luck changes for the weirder the next morning when she discovers an instant noodle box in front of her door. It is filled with 500 baht bills. Apparently it's been left there because the number on her apartment door, 6, is missing a nail, so flips upside down, making it appear she lives in apartment 9, which is actually down the hall. Soon after, a couple of thugs from a Muay Thai camp ask her if she has seen the box. They force their way into her flat, only to be killed, accidentally.
Tum decides to get rid of their bodies, get a plane ticket, obtain a fake passport and visa, take the noodle box with her and go spend the rest of her life somewhere else. But the gangster, Kanjit, who makes fake passports happens to be the very guy she must stay away from. More men sent by a Muay Thai promoter appears at Tum's apartment, where one quickly hid in her wardrobe when she returned home. A young policeman, who is the lover of her nosy neighbor, Pen, suddenly calls on her and discovers the bodies. The hidden man attracts the policeman's attention when he cocks his gun, and the subsequent firefight kills them both.
As Tum tries to hide the two bodies, Pen comes to visit, believing the policeman was still in her home. Another man arrives at the apartment later to seek out the missing men, and mistakenly thought he has killed the policeman after firing into the cop's body which was hidden behind a door. As Tum tried to clean up the mess and hide the cop's body later, Pen and other neighbours spies on her through the keyhole and mistakenly believe she was having an affair with the policeman. Pen contemplates on ways to figure out what Tum is doing, and ends up speculating the worst about her.
Also, there's Tum's friend, Jim, who's distraught over her boyfriend cheating on her. Tum takes Jim with her to get her passport, and Jim accidentally gets caught in the crossfire. Jim, now dead, has been compromised and Tum makes off with the money. Tum remembers the reference of Pen when Pen was telling her about how the bodies were dumped down the lake and whatever goes down there disappears, and therefore dumps the money, escaping with just guilt.

Review: Thailand's film industry is on a competitive level with other Asian countries now.
The coincidences in this movie lead to a lot of laughters while the Thai actors are portraying themselves self-ironically.
From the fine script over the professional camerawork to a soundtrack that makes you want to know more about Thai music 6ixtynin9 was one of the greater surprises at Milano's MIFED 2000.
None of my friends, here in Bangkok, said they like the film.
You might be surprised to learn that in Bangkok there are a lot of actual cases of Thai wives cutting their husbands'.....
I liked this movie a lot.
Although I watch numerous Asian films I believe "6ixtynin9" was the first Thai movie I have seen and I must say I was very impressed.
I could see a large group of viewers enjoying this nice little Thai surprise.The acting wasn't "lights out" but was effective and although the filming was mainly done in an apartment it moved around more than enough to avoid getting stale.I viewed the on the US version DVD and found the quality good enough but not top notch and it wasn't in surround sound.
I would certainly recommend giving this film a watch but you might want to rent before you buy it..
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.
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.
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.
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.
A darker shade of Pen-Ek. 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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
Luckily Ratanaruang has an excellent sense of humor (without becoming too bonkers - Thai humor can be pretty freaky).
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.
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.
Nothing is too 'in your face', hardly any emotion is shown or felt throughout the film, and even (despite the various killings), action seems to be lacking...
You can tell when its over that despite its absurdity, within all the intermediary spots where much is left unsaid, the director has packed a good deal for you to think about, and clearly had some lucid, thought-out objectives for the film.
An intelligent, unique little film that's a heck of a fun ride to watch.
A Good Film From Thailand.
Lalita Panyopas plays Tum, a young lady just laid off from a finance company.
All of a sudden, outside her door, there is a box of cash, which she brings in.
She kills the two guys while trying to save her own life and now has they lying in her small apartment.
It turns out, the money was left outside her door by mistake (the title of the movie is the clue).
The film then chronicles what happens to Tum. This is a pretty twisted film, like a horror film, but without any supernatural forces.
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.
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!
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.
Great breakaway from typical Thai movies.
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.
I'm glad other people appreciate a small production Thai movie as much as I did..
An interesting little film that asks what would you do if you had just been laid off and someone mistakenly drops a million bucks at your doorstep?
Tum (Lalita Panyopas) has to answer that question quickly as the bad guys are knocking on her door.
And, the bodies keep piling up in this funny comedy.Writer/director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, who wrote and directed the great Last Life in the Universe, certainly kept my interest throughout the movie.
A nice girl who mostly through not much fault of her own causes the killing of a lot of people.
The story starts with a nice girl, laid off from her job, who finds corrupt money outside her apartment door and decides to keep it and ends on a good note.I laughed at times because the seeming improbability of the circumstances never seemed to occur to the nice girl.If you watch it, keep in mind that the whole story unfolds in one day!.
Innocently enough, we thought we'll be watching a Thai thriller/action movie.
The movie starts quite odd, but that's OK - it's a Foreign Film, after all.
The movie starts with a recently-fired woman who finds a large sum of money on her doorstep.
A screenplay writer over here once wrote that you can have only one "act of God" to start the plot - but you can't have "coincidences" all over the place to help you push the plot forward.
However, in overall, it looks like the Thai director just created scenes that look like ones from an American thriller of the same type (Money, two groups of gangsters, murders and bodies) without understanding how to do it gracefully.
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.
The story could easily be used for a Hollywood flic though; a girl finds al lot of cash in front of her door.
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..
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.
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.
The two smile, then give her a fist to the side of the head.A quick look around the apartment finds the cash.
As it so happens, the knife Panyopas had used to open the box is still lying on the bed.
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.
Guns are pulled and presto change-o, we have two more bodies littering Panyopas' apartment.
This of course will enter into play later on.Panyopas has the passport in the works, a ticket to London bought.
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 is going to a meeting with the Mafia boss at Panyopas' apartment building.Panyopas and her friend stop to grab the passport.
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.
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 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..
I rented this without knowing much about it, aside from having heard the directors' name, and was very impressed.6IXTYNIN9 (the English title) follows a bit of a dark comedy/crime comedy formula, wherein an innocent makes a discovery (money or property) and falls into an uncontrolled succession of events that pushes them toward actions that defy their usual sense of morality.
It's all handled inventively here, with slow pacing that builds remarkable tension (especially during the latter half of the film), and some very dry humor that always comes out of nowhere - I almost think it should be rented just for the hysterical 'manicure' scene ("What salon was THAT?").
what happens when men enter a single woman's room in Thailand...and other jokes.
Rented this after definitely enjoying "Final Life in the Universe" also by director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang.
Please see that one first, if you enjoy it, then perhaps check this one out.This has trace stylish connections to the other, and there is enough cleverness throughout to make this worth watching, however I'm going to have to invoke a new rule that for every dead body a film loses 5 minutes of character depth.
Indeed, corpses in films are just roles that the writer/director didn't care enough about to flesh out, and instead just flushed them down.The "comedy" here is meant to mingle in a way that I guess is vaguely connected to Tarantino, like QT there's enough tension and blood that some folks won't be able to see the mirth for the murder.
The more I think about the film: the masquerading of the "Mafia" man, an excellent use of a mirror in a shot in a cafe, the shot through a keyhole, the symbol of Tum's killer coolness by way of a fly she traps in an ice drink, some of the lines (Jim's request for "just blood, no giblets" and whatever the manicure-to-brain-infection was all about), the more I like this.
But again this is not an actual film, it is more a fantasy, and I prefer mine with little or no blood.Still, head and shoulders above so much other dreck, though I wonder if this is really seen as "Thai" cinema.
IMDb shows that Pen-Ek spent some time in the US at Pratt Institute, clearly his years there and as an Art Director for other folks makes his silver screen cuisine more cosmopolitan with Thai seasoning than anything else.I also hate the US title, although it might be a jab at folks looking for another sort of Thai video altogether (something the director pokes at twice during the film).
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.
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..
Ruang talok 69 doesn't have the pace of current Hollywood movies and it doesn't need to: Pen-ek has got a story to tell.
Apart from that, '69' entertains with plenty nice shots and love for details, as well as characters which, unlike in many other Thai films, are balanced and like taken from everyday live in Bangkok.
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!