On the twenty-fifth day of Halloween, my boo love gave to me ... twenty five flaming Russian rats!
THE CARD:
Cecil B. Detached, Hollywood Upstairs Acting College foreign accents, Doctor Who’s kid, Aragorn of Arathorn the serial killer, Dexter’s ex, and barrels of bloody borsch.
More details here.
THE ANGLE:
A diamond thief with the worst luck (Stephen Dorf) steals a bunch of diamonds from some stupid rich person’s house. Unfortunately, his inattentive driver plows into a wall during the getaway and Dorf loses the stolen loot. Jason Statham would be very displeased. Dorf’s boss (Sean Pertwee) is pissed at the muck-up and punishes him by sending him to Moscow to break into an office building to steal a valuable heirloom, the golden cross of Ivan III. Dorf and two Russian goons pose as janitors and make their way relatively easy in and out of the secured area where the heirloom is kept, that is until they run into elevator problems and get stuck with a nerdy journalist, a sexy company vice president, a security guard, three ultra conservative spinsters, and some other red-shirted unnamed victims-to-be. The elevator drops down to the 13th floor of the building and the thieves take the other passengers as hostages and try to figure out what do to next. Eh, eh, 13th floor, eh? Oogey boogey! While Dorf and the main goon argue over an escape plan, someone or something is killing the hostages in gruesome and impolite manners. It turns out that the three old babushkas are actually cult members obsessed with resurrecting the old czar Ivan. So much for Perestroika. Their unseen baked ham brother is running around chopping up comrades in a Lord of the Rings get-up and then dissecting them on an altar. You know, Orthodox stuff. So Dorf teams with the hotty executive (Jaime Murray – Yum!), the nerd, and a tough as shit security guard who puts the Mother in Mother Russia. Our kooky heroes run up and down hallways, holler like kiddies in a third-rate carnival haunted house, use rodents as weapons, and fight their way to ninety minutes to get out of this mess.
THE FINISHER:
When you call your movie “Botched” you know you’re just asking for it. The makers of “Shitty”, “Sucky” and “Man, I Just Don’t Have Any Fucking Clue How to Shoot a Movie” know that lesson all too well. In fact, the makers of Botched and those movies are probably one and the same. The movie is a loud, quirky, ham-fisted effort with aspirations of being a hybrid between a black comedy and a caper film which it fails to achieve. It’s too obvious and not smart enough to be a black comedy. It wants to be a clever caper film but it lacks a clever caper. Dorf can’t look more disinterested, Pertwee is wasted, Murray stands around being nice to look at, and although the gore is plentiful, it’s rather cheap-looking. The only saving grace is Geoff Bell who plays the ex-KGB security guard with maniacal gusto. He brings inspired energy into the few comedic moments and steals a fair share of scenes. Bell aside, most of the jokes fall flat, the plot drops dead with the first kill, and the painful punch line at the end of the film will make you cry turnip-flavored tears. Although not completely unwatchable, Botched indeed lives up to its name and in the end, it’s not just Ivan who’s terrible.
THE CARD:Cecil B. Detached, Hollywood Upstairs Acting College foreign accents, Doctor Who’s kid, Aragorn of Arathorn the serial killer, Dexter’s ex, and barrels of bloody borsch.
More details here.
THE ANGLE:
A diamond thief with the worst luck (Stephen Dorf) steals a bunch of diamonds from some stupid rich person’s house. Unfortunately, his inattentive driver plows into a wall during the getaway and Dorf loses the stolen loot. Jason Statham would be very displeased. Dorf’s boss (Sean Pertwee) is pissed at the muck-up and punishes him by sending him to Moscow to break into an office building to steal a valuable heirloom, the golden cross of Ivan III. Dorf and two Russian goons pose as janitors and make their way relatively easy in and out of the secured area where the heirloom is kept, that is until they run into elevator problems and get stuck with a nerdy journalist, a sexy company vice president, a security guard, three ultra conservative spinsters, and some other red-shirted unnamed victims-to-be. The elevator drops down to the 13th floor of the building and the thieves take the other passengers as hostages and try to figure out what do to next. Eh, eh, 13th floor, eh? Oogey boogey! While Dorf and the main goon argue over an escape plan, someone or something is killing the hostages in gruesome and impolite manners. It turns out that the three old babushkas are actually cult members obsessed with resurrecting the old czar Ivan. So much for Perestroika. Their unseen baked ham brother is running around chopping up comrades in a Lord of the Rings get-up and then dissecting them on an altar. You know, Orthodox stuff. So Dorf teams with the hotty executive (Jaime Murray – Yum!), the nerd, and a tough as shit security guard who puts the Mother in Mother Russia. Our kooky heroes run up and down hallways, holler like kiddies in a third-rate carnival haunted house, use rodents as weapons, and fight their way to ninety minutes to get out of this mess.
THE FINISHER:
When you call your movie “Botched” you know you’re just asking for it. The makers of “Shitty”, “Sucky” and “Man, I Just Don’t Have Any Fucking Clue How to Shoot a Movie” know that lesson all too well. In fact, the makers of Botched and those movies are probably one and the same. The movie is a loud, quirky, ham-fisted effort with aspirations of being a hybrid between a black comedy and a caper film which it fails to achieve. It’s too obvious and not smart enough to be a black comedy. It wants to be a clever caper film but it lacks a clever caper. Dorf can’t look more disinterested, Pertwee is wasted, Murray stands around being nice to look at, and although the gore is plentiful, it’s rather cheap-looking. The only saving grace is Geoff Bell who plays the ex-KGB security guard with maniacal gusto. He brings inspired energy into the few comedic moments and steals a fair share of scenes. Bell aside, most of the jokes fall flat, the plot drops dead with the first kill, and the painful punch line at the end of the film will make you cry turnip-flavored tears. Although not completely unwatchable, Botched indeed lives up to its name and in the end, it’s not just Ivan who’s terrible.
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