Botched

...Mostly bloody. And when an armor-clad direct descendant of Ivan the Terrible shows up to hack and slash our beleaguered anti-heroes, borderline ridiculous.

   In this pseudo-horror, pseudo-comedy, the pseudo-plot follows a thief named Ritchie (Stephen Dorff) who, when a jewel heist goes badly awry, pays a visit to his crime boss Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee) who forces him, under duress, to pull off another crime.

   Ritchie joins forces with sociopath Peter (Jamie Foreman) and his whimpering brother Yuri (Russell Smith) in a high-rise in Moscow, Russia. Their mission: to steal an expensive cross that once belonged to royalty.

    No one ever wanted to watch a movie about a safe and simple jewel heist, however, and things get complicated -- fast. Although he is a thief, Ritchie has a moral code.

    Peter, on the other hand, doesn't, and pretty soon a woman is dead and they have a cluster of hostages, among them shy pacifist Dmitry (Hugh O'Conor), attractive Anna (Jaime Murray), and a strange, religious group of women led by Sonya (Bronagh Gallagher).

  When one of these people pulls a gun and it is revealed the entire floor is booby-trapped and policed by a madman, things get bloody. Although it has some funny moments, Botched dishes out sequence after comic sequence that simply doesn't work, among them the stolen sandwich, the pissing rat, and the scene where Dmitry is slapped.

  On top of that Jaime Murray, as Anna, is mediocre at best and the idea that she would even consider hooking up with Ritchie is really pushing it. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? The performance of Edward Baker-Duli as the mad slasher is exaggerated and uninteresting, like a role in a stage play -- a really bad stage play.

   Although I did like the Russian music and the hyper-kinetic cinematography, Botched was neither funny nor involving enough to hold my attention. On the back of the box, Slasherpool.com calls it a "brilliant horror-comedy" and compares it to Shaun of the Dead. Fat chance, skippy.