In Edinburgh, a darkly comic, period-set thriller unravels the grim business of body snatching and ambition, opening with Angus the Hangman Bill Bailey narrating how the corpses he ferries to Dr Knox Tom Wilkinson are all part of a larger, rival struggle with Dr Monro Tim Curry. The tale quickly shifts to two struggling lodgers, William Burke Simon Pegg and William Hare Andy Serkis, who stumble into a macabre scheme after a roadside misadventure and a failed cheese business that they try to pass off as something useful. Their decision to move a dead body to Knox’s dissecting table marks the start of a dangerous collaboration that pays handsomely but costs them dearly in trust, conscience, and luck.
At a bustling inn where Hare’s wife Lucky Jessica Hynes keeps house, the pair encounter Ginny Hawkins Isla Fisher, a former prostitute with real dreams of acting. Ginny performs an impassioned Macbeth excerpt to grab attention, and as Burke speaks with her, a spark of possibility lights up in both their lives. Burke sees a path to fund Ginny’s ambitions, while Hare views the money as a way to open a funeral parlor and secure their future. The moment Knox is shown the mangled, barrel-stowed corpse—whose spine has to be broken to fit—their scheme gains a terrifying pragmatism: two bodies a week in exchange for cash that can change everything.
Back at the inn, the looming shadow of death intensifies as Joseph, a lodger played by Old Joseph [Christopher Lee], edges toward the end of his life. Burke and Hare decide to claim his body before he dies, then swiftly confirm their grim knack for turning the living into profit once the body is delivered to Knox. The financial windfall allows Burke to pursue Ginny’s dream with renewed vigor, while Hare focuses on slicing time off the road to a more secure future. Yet the promise of money pulls in other currents. Lucky, now overwhelmed by Joseph’s deteriorating condition, is left to explain the precariousness of their situation, and Burke’s growing commitment to Ginny’s career becomes a point of tension between the two men.
Meanwhile, the criminal duo crosses paths with Fergus [David Schofield], a henchman in the employ of Danny McTavish [David Hayman], and with Lord Harrington [Hugh Bonneville] and William Wordsworth [Simon Farnaby], who react to the escalating crime with a call to action. McLintock—Captain Tam McLintoch [Ronnie Corbett] and his allies are tasked with bringing the culprits to heel, setting off a chain of pursuits and near-captures that tighten the noose around Burke and Hare. The film follows the cat-and-mouse maneuvers as Hare is repeatedly dragged into danger and forced to part with more money for protection, while Burke navigates a dangerous balance between love, ambition, and a growing sense of moral restraint that never fully takes hold.
As the tension peaks, the duo’s luck runs thin: McLintock’s squad captures them just as Burke and Ginny are about to consummate their personal hopes, and Hare and Lucky are seized in their own vulnerable moment. Each is jailed in separate cells with a grim ultimatum: confess to the murders, and one or more of the others might walk free. Burke agrees to betray the truth only on the condition that he can be in a cell with Ginny so they can finally have privacy and closeness. The arrangement seals a cruel fate, but it also preserves a fragile tenderness in a situation built on brutality.
The next day arrives with the inevitable climax in the air. Burke faces the hangman’s noose, and Angus the Hangman’s narration returns with a final, stark line that haunts the scene. In a quietly devastating moment, Burke looks out at Ginny from the crowd and delivers his last words, “I did it for love.” > Only this. The story then widens its lens to show that, while the characters move apart in life, their choices echo forward. The fates of Ginny, Lucky, McTavish, and the rest ripple through Edinburgh’s streets, and the camera lingers on the skeleton of Burke in a present-day museum, a grim reminder that the dead’s stories can outlive the living in the most unexpected ways.
