Here is the challenge for the movie ‘Botched’.  I’m in the final stages of the game ‘Marvel Ultimate Alliance’ and me and my heroes are on the verge of taking out Doctor Doom.  Since I’ve been playing this game I really wasn’t too keen on putting it to the side and waiting another day to polish it off.  I also had the movie ‘Botched’ waiting to be seen before it had to go back so I was simply going to do both at the same time.  This isn’t fair to ‘Botched’ but if this movie is good, then it will easily take up the majority of my time and I will gladly put my controller down.  But unfortunately ‘Botched’ wasn’t all that good and it ended up taking me three hours to watch a ninety minute movie due to my pausing and switching back and forth between the two mediums.  Keep that in mind as this probably throws a wrench in the legitimacy of this film review, but damn, I had to finish that game.

Ritchie, a master thief, has just easily pulled of a major diamond heist.  Unfortunately circumstance has led Ritchie to lose all the diamonds upsetting his boss, Russian mob heavy Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee).  But being a fair man, Groznyi is giving Ritchie one more chance to make right for him by sending him to Moscow to steal a precious cross Medallion once owned by Ivan the Terrible.  In Moscow Ritchie meets his squad for this little caper in the violent Peter (Jamie Foreman) and his milquetoast brother Yuri (Russell Smith).  Other than Peter unnecessarily killing a woman, the job at the sky scraper comes off without a hitch, but somehow security seems to be on to our trio and they stop the lift, which has about a half dozen other riders, on the thirteenth floor.

When negotiations with the police lead to a big pair of scissors leaping from the elevator shaft and chopping a young man’s head off, our crew quickly realizes that they aren’t really dealing with the police and have instead landed in a Resident Evil

game.  One by one our crew is being brutally hunted, skinned and killed in varying tortuous ways as this thirteenth floor is rigged with floor stakes, falling knives, tie ropes and many other weapons of death.  Did I mention that this is a comedy?  Now Ritchie, along side his new found sexy sidekick Anna (Jaime Murray) must find a way to stop the crazed killers before they get them.

Jaime Murray, who you may remember from the BBC TV show ‘Hustle’, sure is pretty.  Which is probably the best thing that ‘Botched’ has to offer.  Though I must say her clothing choices do seem a little ‘inappropriate’ for a Jr. Vice President of a major Russian firm.  Regardless, Stephen Dorff who is pretty good in roles where he’s criminally violent, really isn’t much of a comedian and building your movie billed as a comedy around a guy who really isn’t all that funny might not have been the best idea.  You can tell what director Kit Ryan was shooting for as he tried like hell to make this thing a fun, bloody, farciful romp, but the timing just wasn’t there.  There were some good comic performances too with Geoff Bell as the self proclaimed Alpha Male security guard Boris and Jamie Foreman playing the hyper violent Peter the thief, with Jaime Murray having to do just this kind of thing every week in ‘Hustle’.

It was also a little odd as to why they chose Moscow as a setting for this film since almost all of the actors, except for Dorff, are British.  They had to don these lame accents and it did seem strange that they chose to speak to each other, though they are allegedly Russian, in lame Russian accents even in the absence of the American.  Just set the damn thing in London and have them trying to steal some precious English artifact.  I’m sure the empire has a few lying around somewhere.

However if you happen to be a hound for gore, then you’ve come to the right place because we have beheadings, mace’s to the brain, bodies being sliced in two, limbs being severed, hooks to the neck... you name it... ‘Botched’ squeezed it into play someway.  Did I mention that is a comedy?  Not much of one though.  ‘Botched’ really, really tried to be an over-the-top crazy violent action comedy, but unfortunately it missed its mark.  I, on other hand, kicked Doctor Dooms ASS!  The universe is safe once again and you have ME to thank for it.