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.

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. Good dream and imagination sequences, and an excellent soundtrack (not just the songs, but the pure soundtrack as well). It was funny seeing a cassette player, in a critical role, I tried renting a car with one recently so I could play some books on tape. I had about as much luck as any given male character has of surviving in this film.The lead actress, evidently a soap opera star in Thailand, had a beguiling placidity, that really played well as a mouse who roars. 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. It's just a genre that I don't normally seek out...sure I'm as desensitized to death as the next guy, but I still am not crazy about seeing it. Nor having to sort of glide past implausibilities...(eg, death by vase to the head??).I think where "Final Life..." (aka "Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan") succeeds better than this, is that the murder that occurs in that remains mysterious and never the focal point. Here the guarded nature of the lead actress, and left without a real confidante, limits any sort of insight into what she's actually going through. 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). Since I can't quite see to giving this a 9, I guess I'll give it a 6/10PS On no...not a mandatory 'merican remakehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427994/combined

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!