Burke and Hare – Entertaining enough

I’m always sceptical about films that claim to be ‘based on a true story.’ Most seem to be more fictionalised than accurate.  Therefore, I appreciated the text at the beginning of ‘Burke and Hare’ which said something like ‘Based on a true story (apart from the bits that aren’t).’ At least it admitted that, although based on a pair of murderous entrepreneurs over a hundred years ago, the film-makers have taken enough ‘artistic license’ with the source material to make it entertaining, rather than factually correct. 

The characters (and people they’re based on) of ‘Burke’ and ‘Hare’ were actually nineteenth century grave robbers who made a pretty penny selling their corpses to high-profile medical professionals of the day.  In fact, demand was so high for their services that they end up having to employ – how should I put it – even more ‘criminal’ methods to keep the local doctors in ‘stiffs.’

The two leads are played by Simon Pegg (most famous for his ‘Cornetto trilogy’) and Andy Serkis (most famous for never being seen on screen in favour of his ‘motion capture’ abilities).  The film may not be the greatest written, or destined to win any awards (and many of Pegg’s other characters will be remembered way over Burke), but the cast (and by that I mean everyone down to those with only a line or two here and there) are such a bunch of familiar faces from Tim Curry to Ronnie Corbett.

Due to the amount of death/murders, it’s hardly a ‘family film,’ so you’ll need to be in the mood for something pretty dark to get the most of out of this movie.  There’s even a reasonably but of gore here and there, not so much in the killings themselves, but in the various graphic autopsy scenes.

I won’t say that ‘Burke and Hare’ is a fantastic film and definitely not a historically accurate one, but – luckily thanks to that opening line of text – I don’t see it as a true depiction and merely an entertaining little tale, performed by a crop of very watchable and likable actors, mixed with plenty of blank comedy to keep you amused for an hour and a half.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that