Botched

Director: Kit Ryan (Interview)
Screenwriters: Derek Boyle, Eamon Friel
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Sean Pertwee, Jaime Murray
Running time: 91 mins
Certificate: 15

Any film bearing a cast spearheaded by Stephen Dorff, Sean Pertwee and that brunette totty from Hustle is unlikely to whip an audience's anticipation into a frenzy. Yet surprisingly, Botched is a blood-splattered farcical comedy bolstered by a script that contains several flourishes of ingenuity.

A heist gone wrong is the familiar foundation for a sequence of increasingly bizarre and unpredictable turns in the narrative, as Dorff's thief Ritchie is blackmailed by Pertwee's Russian Mafia boss Groznyi into stealing a religious artifact from a creepy Moscow building. Accompanied by two incompetent henchmen, Ritchie's plan is jeopardised when an elevator - containing the robbers and a selection of wacky civilians - breaks down on a mysterious floor. A hostage-taking situation ensues, but a quick subversion of power sees the hunters turn into the hunted as all hell breaks loose and a sword-wielding religious nut roams the corridors.

Botched isn't entirely successful in fusing the comedy and horror genres together. There's a lack of menace or sense of impending dread to the whole film and the evil antagonists are poorly realised and ill-conceived plot functions. Certainly some more suspenseful and expressionistic lighting could have helped, although budgetary concerns may well have prohibited this.

Fortunately, there are frequent moments of clever invention that help to sustain interest in the fates of certain characters and provide plenty of laughs along the way. A corpse-hungry rodent provides great visual humour at appropriate intervals and the transition of Dmitri from geekish journalist into slick slayer is amusing.

Above all, the character of Boris is a work of genius and played superbly by Geoff Bell. A bumbling Clouseau-esque special forces man determined to establish himself as the group's Alpha Male, he comes out with such profound gems as: "In trained hands, a filing cabinet can be more effective than a tank". A highly quotable quip and said entirely straight-faced too.

It's almost as funny as Hustle's Jaime Murray's attempts to maintain her forced Russian accent throughout the film. There's definitely some kind of drinking game that could be created in honour of her performance. One finger for every slip into English, and one pint for every time she forgets she's just a body part hacked off and should be in agony.

Nominal Hollywood presence Stephen Dorff has little to sink his teeth into, but he wisely opts to play it straight as bland Ritchie throughout and provide a constant backbone as surrounding events descend into surreal and macabre realms. By providing a consistently serious performance, it allows the other characters to display their weirdness around him and flourish as a result.

Approach Botched with low expectations and you may well be impressed with the amount of laughs to be derived from a script that serves up appealing supporting characters and sheer unpredictability.