Director – Vincenzo Pirrotta – 2022 – Italy – 105m
***1/2
A gang of criminals in Palermo runs an insurance fraud operation involving the breaking of people’s bones – Italian film inspired by real facts premieres at the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
The scene you’re most likely to remember comes right at the start of The Bone Breakers. Inside a warehouse, bodybuilding weights are packed into a suitcase which, once sealed, is carried up some scaffolding. Below, men hold another man’s arm so that it rests on two blocks, one at each end, then the man on the scaffolding drops the case from the scaffolding onto the man below’s rested arm, painfully breaking it. You’re immediately wondering what’s going on, possibly assuming the men are gangsters and the man whose arm has been broken has upset or crossed them in some way.
However, the man is compliant and even though his fractured arm clearly causes him considerable pain afterwards, he goes along with and and doesn’t appear to bear the men who have done this any ill will. They get him to the hospital where his arm is put in a sling, then take him to another building in which he’ll live in the short term, presumably to recuperate.… Read the rest
