For the uninitiated, the very cheekily titled 6ixtynin9 is based on the 1999 hit film of the same name, where a woman finds a box full of money in front of her house after losing her job. We haven’t seen the film, but we are guessing that it must have a cult status in Thailand for it to be remade almost twenty-four years later as a series. This reference also explains the very choppy trailer and the next-to-no hints it gives us about the story. We got just one thing from it, which is that the woman, played by Davika Hoorne, has found a box. The other thing we were able to decipher is that it happened because the number on her door turns upside down every time she closes it. Therefore, we believe that the name of the series 6ixtynin9 also means that the life of the woman goes haywire after receiving the box.
Story and Plot
Before we speculate on what all could be in 6ixtynin9, Man Trisanu Soranun’s appearance in the trailer made us quite happy. He was really something in his recent series, Step by Step, and we are glad to see him in a new project again. Another familiar face is Patara Eksangkul, and we know for a fact that this man in a thriller always spells trouble. After these initial thoughts, we sat down to dissect the trailer and found some interesting possibilities.
The woman’s name is Toom, and her neighbor is played by Patara Eksangkul. He will definitely turn out to be a romantic interest or the partner in crime, for a share of the money or some other vested interest. People come knocking at Toom’s door for the money, and there is some bloodshed because neither party is willing to let go of what they believe is theirs. Man Trisanu Soranun is the police inspector, and we will be happy if he is not a victim of Toom since we like the actor a lot. On that note, we wish he had plenty of screen time in the series.
At one point, we wondered if there was a supernatural element in the plot. There is a woman with gray hair and dark lips, wearing white clothes and sitting in front of an even whiter background, asking an empty chair their name. Even the chair is white. It doesn’t look like a regular office setting but like a modern kind of otherworld. The subtitles do say that this is Toom’s “funny story,” so we are left wondering if this plays out like a black comedy, though we did not get any hint of that in the trailer. Toom is seen telling someone that she hit the jackpot, and if we are guessing right that the man is her father or a relative, it must mean that they are in debt. We say this because Toom has to desperately need the money to go to such lengths to fight for it. It cannot be as simple as protection against losing the job and wanting savings for a trip to Italy, like the entire world is doing right now. It has to be a do-or-die situation, and nothing brings you closer to that point than the parents of Asian dramas.
As the trailer shifts to show us glimpses of the chaos that follows, we know that whoever the money belonged to probably found it at Toom’s place or knows about it. In the meantime, we think that Toom is dealing with the struggle of keeping her hands clean in the midst of it all. She has to undoubtedly kill some people, and it is a requirement to get rid of their bodies. Will she go the route of chopping them up into pieces and disposing of them in boxes, as we suspect? We saw at the beginning of the trailer that someone was calling her strange for just coming and going somewhere the whole day.
As a woman acting alone, she would need to make multiple trips to dispose of the bodies collected in her apartment. But at the end of the trailer, she is at the police station to report a murder. She is probably reporting her own crime. This scene could be set at any one of the three points in the narrative of the series. Maybe, as a regular, law-abiding citizen, she goes to the station after her first kill but is dissuaded after learning just how much she needs the money or gets cold feet at the idea of spending years in prison. If not this scenario, this may happen in the final half hour, when she probably decides that enough is enough and she needs to set things straight before being called away by one of her blackmailers, who either want the money or are threatening one of her loved ones. Or, this could be how the movie ends, with Toom deciding to just own up to it and get rid of the trauma and bloodshed around her.
Where to watch
6ixtynin9 is a limited series that will be released on Netflix on September 6th, 2023. There is a lot of excitement for it and the expectations are high when it comes to both the story and the vision of the director to amend it for the newer audiences.
Final Thoughts
6ixtynin9 is not an unpredictable story. The likes of it have been told before, and even though it is coming from the same director, we are sure that this is not the first remake or the first movie or series inspired by the original. For people who have watched the original film or have grown up with it as part of regular pop culture, there may be a nostalgic value to it. As for others, the trailer does the job. We cannot expect something “never seen before” from a remake. But the editing of the trailer promises a certain type of unraveling of the plot that makes us curious. The music, the subdued acting, and the raw and unpracticed action promise a few good entertaining hours. The only way this series can go wrong is if it decides to get overindulgent, which is often the case when the people at the helm of affairs are the original makers. But we are still not ruling out the possibility of finding some fresh elements in the series, so let us see what 6ixtynin9 brings for us.
