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After a simple jewelry heist goes horribly wrong, Ritchie (Stephen Dorff) is forced to return to his boss empty-handed—and he’s given just one last chance to do a job without messing it up.
At first, the job seems pretty simple. Ritchie flies into Moscow, he meets up with a couple of guys, and they head to a huge building, where they’re supposed to steal an antique cross (which is rumored to have belonged to Ivan the Terrible) from the penthouse.
In the penthouse, however, one of Ritchie’s accomplices kills a woman, and everything starts to fall apart. While they’re trying to get away, the three of them get trapped on an elevator with a bunch of hostages, and they’re all let out onto the building’s eerily unused 13th floor. And while it seems to be deserted, they soon discover that there’s someone else on the floor—and he’s out for blood.
At first, Botched seems like just another crime thriller—though a rather offbeat and darkly, subtly funny one. It starts slowly—with the botched heist, the angry boss, and the incompetent Russian contacts. But once the trio and their hostages arrive on the 13th floor, things start to get creepy—and, well…odd. With the exception of poor Ritchie, who just wants to finish the job and get on the first plane home to L.A., most of the characters are totally over-the-top—from the whiny crook, Yuri (Russell Smith), to the security guard and self-proclaimed alpha male, Boris (Geoff Bell). And it starts to feel as though the whole movie will be a bunch of strange conversations among strange characters in a creepy room.
But then, when you least expect it, the heads start flying and the blood starts spurting. The characters get even crazier—especially once the barbaric, long-haired, pirouetting killer arrives on-screen. The action gets more intense, the music gets sillier, and everything gets goofier and goofier until the whole thing turns into one big, bloody ridiculous free-for-all.
Now, when it comes to horror-comedies, the funnier they are, the more I like them (my favorite example being Shaun of the Dead). But Botched is more odd than funny. In fact, at times, I wondered whether the filmmakers had actually intended to make a somewhat serious horror film—but when they realized that people were laughing at it, they decided to add some silly music and some disco lights and call it a horror-comedy. Because while the movie definitely has its hilarious moments, the laughs often seem completely unintentional—and, thus, just a little bit uncomfortable.
Though the ridiculous moments in Botched are often extremely funny (in a sick, twisted, and bizarre kind of way), the movie doesn’t really commit to being silly. Instead, it feels uneven and indecisive—as though it isn’t sure whether it wants to be a crime thriller, a horror movie, or a zany comedy. It’s definitely good for a few laughs—just not enough of them.
