Ruang talok 69

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.

None of my friends, here in Bangkok, said they like the film. My taste might be different but I think Ruang Talok 69 (the Joke 69) is really good.

My reason is that it is a strong and good satire of life in Bangkok and the Thai culture. The Asian financial crisis in 1997, the boxer gangsters (they wear Muay Thai jackets), the rural guy who misses his mom, the sadistic wife, the obscene phone call, etc. all are somehow relating to real situations and real people here. You might be surprised to learn that in Bangkok there are a lot of actual cases of Thai wives cutting their husbands'..... eh, you know which part I'm talking about.

These kind of things so weird and don't make any sense but they are what we face in our daily life. Thai people are so used to them that we sometimes forgot to realize how non-sense they are. So non-sense that it's actually funny. And it's great to see it mocked so tastefully in this movie.

I liked this movie a lot. And when I read the comments, I was glad to know some other people liked it too.

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

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

Lalita Panyopas plays Tum, a young lady just laid off from a finance company. She is naturally deeply affected by it and thinks of suicide. All of a sudden, outside her door, there is a box of cash, which she brings in. Of course, she is visited by two thugs who want the money back, which she denies having, so they walk away. Is that the end of that? Of course not. 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. It has a strange, compelling rhythm to it, and it kept my interest. Once you have the first two thugs killed, you're hooked on what will happen next. Believe me, a lot does. Some of it is fairly preposterous, but darkly comic. Ms. Panyopas is a pretty good actress, not classically pretty, but attractive. You can't imagine being her, and, despite the monetary windfall, you don't want to be her. The moral is money is the root of all evil, and it is presented to us again and again. I liked this, check it out.