415. Burke And Hare (2010)

Starring: Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher

Director: John Landis

Running Time: 91 mins

Burke And Hare is a British film about the series of murders carried out by notorious Irish grave robbers: William Burke and William Hare, and the attempts of the Edinburgh militia to bring them to justice before there racket gets out of hand.

I really enjoyed this film. It may not have been very focussed at all on what was would have been an interesting historical story, but the plot was both entertaining to follow, and of course, very funny to watch.

In terms of the comedy of this film, it was just a little different to what you normally see from the average one. There was a degree of slapstick and idiotic comedy throughout, but the majority was a lot more quiet and occasionally dark, a unique style in itself that I really enjoyed watching.

The film has been described as a ‘thriller’ by some people, however I felt that the pacing of the story was way too slow to be at all thrilling. Of course, I really enjoyed the plot, which had a certain element of unpredictability in it, predicting when these guys would be caught for the murders they had been committing, however the majority of the film was not fast enough to have any sort of excitement.

The ending was also strangely emotional and sad. After the militia round up their suspects, at which point I was getting a little tired of the film, the ending surprised me by being so oddly emotional, and fortunately not at all cheesy.

Overall, I’ll give this a 7.7, because although it had some pacing issues, I enjoyed pretty much all of the comedy and storyline.