6IXTYNIN9 - DVD review

Years from now, some graduate student is going to write a paper on "Sex as Metaphor in Pen-ek Ratanaruang's '6ixtynin9,'" insomuch as there are two opposing groups of thugs in this strange little film, each trying to "do" the other. But that allusion is the only thing sexual in "6ixtynin9," a fetching Bangkok farce with no sex or nudity.

The film is subtitled "a funny story about six and nine," which should tip off viewers that coincidence and contrivance will reign as supremely as in Shakespearian and Fifties' bedroom farces. It's all about mistaken identity, and the broken apartment door number of a young Thai woman named Tum. The woman, who has just picked one of three unlucky numbers at work to result in layoff, hears a knock outside her door and finds a noodle box. Inside, she realizes that it's crammed full of money, and she doesn't even hesitate to keep it, something the audience believes because on the way home she shoplifted some items she didn't have enough money to pay for. But shoplifting and murder are two different things, and this film largely trusts that audiences are going to go along with the premise of Tum's increasingly desperate acts to keep that money.

"6ixtynin9" is similar in its narrative drive to "Falling Down," a one-note Michael Douglas film about a nine-to-fiver who loses it one day and becomes increasingly more violent in his "I'm not going to take it anymore" actions. But the emotional spirit of this film, with its dark and deadpan humor, comes closer to "Fargo"—even down to the chopping up of body parts. Unfortunately, "6ixtynin9" lacks the talented people like Frances McDormand and William H. Macy who can pull it off. Lalita Panyopas is imminently watchable, but she never moves facially beyond that initial "I just lost my job" shell-shocked look.

Director Pen-ek Ratanaruang also relies too much on the same gimmicks to keep the plot moving forward, so that the element of surprise is ironically reduced by the very things that are intended to startle. It doesn't take us long, for example, to get a feel for the pattern that ringing phones give people away and move the violent action forward, while knocks on the door (apart from the initial scene) interrupt and put the forward movement on hold. And everything is related in this film, where the "6" on Tum's door keeps falling down (no Michael Douglas pun intended) to where it reads "9."

When two thugs wearing Kanjit Thai Boxing sweatsuits show up at her door moments after they realized they put kickback money for a fixed fight in front of the wrong apartment, Tum denies that she found anything. And then another knock, and a sock in the face. "This is an introduction. If I find the box, someone will be dead," one of the men says. While he searches one room, his partner with neck brace looks under the bed and gets clobbered by Tum. And when the big man from the other rooms rushes in and tries to choke her, she defends herself by grabbing a knife that just happened to be on the bed (coincidence?). So she's got this box of money and two bodies in her apartment. But the mistaken identity and chain of bizarre events is only beginning, as Kanjit sends more thugs and the Mafia Tong sends thugs, and somehow each thinks that the other is double-crossing them. Throw in some coincidental appearances by police and Tum's encounters with neighbors, friends, and a maker of illegal passports, and the farce becomes complicated enough to where it's not just all about the killing.

There are some laugh-out-loud funny moments in this film, but mostly it's "Fargo" dark. I cracked up, for example, when a pair of boxing thugs in Tum's apartment hear a phone and the deaf one instinctively goes to answer it. He holds it to his ear, then passes the phone on to his partner. It turns out to be the obscene caller that had been bothering Tum, and the man slaps his deaf partner on the side of the head and berates him for handing him an obscene caller. "How am I supposed to know? I'm deaf," the man says. "Then why did you answer the phone in the first place?" his partner asks. "It caught me by surprise." It's funny, too, when Tum is at the fake passport headquarters (which, coincidentally, turns out to be one of the key players in this farce) and as she's talking about her passport there's a man in the other room photographing someone for HIS passport. "Don't move," the photographer says, and in the next breath the subject off camera tells him not to talk to him like that and calls him a cocksucker," after which the photographer takes out a gun and shoots him.

But there aren't enough of those outrageously comic moments to drive this as a comedy, and that leaves viewers pretty much at the mercy of a plot that's interesting to watch but not all that emotionally involving—again, because of the predictability.

The things to watch—and appreciate—are actually Ratanaruang's cinematic techniques. More than anything, his shots add variety and interest. Out of nowhere there will appear a fish-eye lens shot, or a down-angle shot, or a slightly blurred shot that slowly comes into focus as the characters speak. My favorite shots are those when Ratanaruang separates the audio from the video and keeps one in real time while moving the other forward. Example? Tum answers the phone, and we watch and hear her talking. Then she begins to clean up evidence around the apartment, while we still hear her voice continuing that same conversation—the implication being, of course, that she cleans the apartment after the phone call. But it's as innovative as the old Warner Brothers cartoons where Friz Freleng and company would radically change backgrounds while the action in the foreground continued. Shades of "Traffic," there are also shots which are deliberately grainy or shot in red.

Video:
There are no indications and I didn't measure, but this 118-minute film appears to be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, in color that is for the most part true and vibrant. There are, however, scenes where the colors wash out a bit and the film turns slightly grainy, just as there are brightly-lit frames that tend to betray imperfections in the film, with tiny flecks of white and black visible but not intrusive. None of these imperfections affected my viewing experience.

Audio:
"6ixtynin9" offers a Thai Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack with English subtitles. The sound is adequate, not spectacular, with some scenes having a slightly hollow tone to them, but again, nothing that affected my viewing experience.

Extras:
Apart from the trailer, Palm Pictures previews, and weblinks I wasn't able to access with my iMac, there are no extras.

Bottom Line:
"6ixtynin9" is an interesting exercise in filmmaking, more than it is an engaging thriller or comedy, primarily because the two genres tend to work against each other, and because Ratanaruang relies too much on coincidence and the same plot devices throughout. But it makes for an entertaining enough night of cinema, and I'm guessing some viewers will enjoy it even more than I did. "6ixtynin9" comes from the director of "Last Life in the Universe" and it won Best Feature at the Brooklyn International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI Prize at the Hong Kong International, and the Don Quixote Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.