What if Hitler’s body hadn’t been cremated in Berlin by the SS? That alt-history teaser is the starting point for Ben Parker’s action thriller, which posits a tug of war over the corpse between a Soviet unit escorting it back to Stalin and pro-Nazi partisans hellbent on recovering it. Taking place in the Polish forests in the dying days of the second world war, Burial has an ambitious scope and a rueful sense of war’s barrenness – so it’s a shame it can’t unwrap its formaldehyde-steeped central conceit into something dramatically satisfying.
Brana (Charlotte Vega) is a young intelligence officer tasked with escorting the decomposing Führer back to Moscow, but morale is flagging among her soldiers as they travel through dense woodland stalked by “werewolf” resistance fighters. Army officer Vadim (Dan Renton Skinner), intent on undermining her authority, just wants to slope off and ravage the local womenfolk. But Nazi officer Wölfram (Kristjan Üksküla) is closing in, so she has to lean on the dependable Tor (Barry Ward) and friendly local guerrilla Lukasz (Harry Potter’s Tom Felton) to see the mission out.
