The Bone Man

Simon Brenner is a former detective; he now repossesses the cars of people who have missed their payments. One car takes him to a village in the Austrian mountains. There is a large restaurant in the village, famous for its fried chicken, with coaches bringing customers and a bone grinding machine running out the back. Looking for the car, Brenner finds human bone in the machine. The owner, his son, his daughter in law and the rest of the village have no wish to discuss the matter. The snow comes down, the roads close, and Brenner cannot get out. Wolfgang Murnberger directs. The film is adapted from the Brenner novels of Wolf Haas and the script was written with the author. Josef Hader, Josef Bierbichler, Birgit Minichmayr and Christoph Luser are in the cast. It is an Austrian and German co-production. This is the third film made with the same character. The matter it treats is a province settling its own accounts; nobody calls the police. The film uses black humour and gives its violence with a ridiculous ordinariness. Josef Hader is both the lead and a writer of the script, and plays the character as a reluctant, tired man. The narrative builds the snowed in village like a trap. Food and the restaurant are at the centre, and that choice is uncomfortable. The narrative gives a detective solution but its real interest is in the characters. The ending comforts nobody. Its limit is tone; the humour is very dry, the violence sudden, and some scenes are stomach turning. Who it is for: viewers who like Austrian and German black crime. Who it is not for: the humour is dry, it is harsh, and the ending dark.