Lalita Panyopas plays Tum, a faceless number in the Thai workers militia about to be laid off due to crude and uncontrolled Western down-sizing. The film opens with her heartless boss conducting a public drawing of straws amongst the hapless workers to see who will go. Three women draw the unlucky numbers. The first faints (a common reaction for women confronted with the unthinkable in Pen-Ek’s films) and the second runs screaming from the room. Tum, the third woman, gets lucky. Sort of.
The next two hours of this careening and often hilarious romp into the netherworld of Pacific Rim mayhem shows that Asians do, indeed, have a sense of humor. And a sense of humor that is not ashamed to go overboard in search of the extreme. An odd and intriguing experiment into the world of Italian spaghetti westerns, Tarantino blood parodies and teenage horror flicks, “6 and 9” takes the viewer into a world where all that glitters is definitely not gold, but is more likely bodily fluid. Or maybe just a stir-fry of the sensibilities.
The prize of the movie is, sensibly enough, a boxful of money. But not just any boxful of money, as the thug in the opening scene reminds us, but a pork flavored noodles box full of the filthy lucre. Bashful and timid as the tropical day is long, Tum does well when push comes to shove, proving equally adept with a heavy planter or with a swift knife to the side (a la Lana Turner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice”—when will thugs learn to protect their ribs?). Aghast at her unintentional murder, Tum hides the bodies and begins what will be a marathon cleanup of her blood soaked apartment. The audience has to laugh when the first house-wife-like blood spill clean-up evolves into a veritable apartment refinishing in gore.
As it turns out, the pork noodle box of clams is the missing property of two very lethal, but not too bright, mafia gangs operating in Thailand. As Mr. Tong (Arun Wannarbodeewong), one of the Thai mafia leaders, points out, westerners believe there are only two kinds of people in Thailand, drug dealers and prostitutes. And he is certainly not the latter. Apparently diversifying from the sole business of heroine, Tong is into a variety of shady businesses, including false passports. Unfortunately, his passport photographer and bodyguard has a short temper when it comes to posing his subjects. If they move, he kills them. Although this solves the fuzzy image problem, the passport clients are not usually able to come up with the rest of the payment when it comes due.
As luck would have it, when Tum needs to get out of town fast, where does she go for a passport, but to Mr. Tong. Their roles vis-à-vis the missing noodle box unbeknownst to either one, Tong’s thugs and Tum tiptoe around the poppies (at least as long as the thugs still have legs to tip-toe with--but that’s getting ahead of the story) in a series of bloody misadventures. As the gangs start to kill each other in Tum’s apartment, the place starts to look more like “Fight Club” than anything else and the bodies start to take up space. Tum is forced to go to the local Ikea for tasteful rattan body boxes and is soon boxing bodies as fast as the hapless palookas can knock each other off.
Fortunately, the tasteful rattan body boxes make handy seating for her nosy neighbor downstairs who mistakes the bumps in the night upstairs for Tum’s carnal activities with the local studs. The downstairs neighbor is one of three women who turn the audience’ attentions to the similarity between sex and death. As they speculate as to the wild and erotic sounds of corporal contact, Tum is considering taking up the increasing quantities of blood with a shop-vac.
Disposal of the bodies in the foul smelling yeast waste pond (where is the Sierra Club?) and jokes from the betrayed ladies about male cuisine round out the colorful metaphors that run throughout the film. The final shootout is a pretty good one, sort of a “Reservoir Dogs,” finale without the soul. And Pen-Ek’s script is a non-discriminatory killer; the good and bad alike are mowed down in this movie. Cops, friends, foes, all thrown to the dogs over a measly $25,000 in a (don’t forget this) pork noodle box.
All in all, a funny and entertaining movie, but why not watch the original (western) stuff and forget the Asian import? That will be the crucial question for audiences considering renting this DVD. Although the film makes a game attempt at weaving together several good yarns into one, the stories never quite loop around enough to fully make the braid. The hard thing about concocting a complex and interwoven movie plot is there is hardly enough time in the course of the average movie. What’s more, while developing the plot, the director and screenwriter had better keep things moving. And the stories are weak unless they include meaningfully developed characters. Unfortunately, “6 and 9” tries to do too much with too little of a screenplay. We simply don’t feel the impact of the death and destruction because we don’t feel for the characters.
Nonetheless, an enjoyable and well produced mixture of the east, the west and the absurd; fun to watch if only to see our own reflection in the eyes of Asian film-makers. Is this what they really see in us? Out in DVD January 2005, catch it while you can, or eat your noodles by yourself.
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