The Mafia Kills Only In Summer * *

This film concludes with a story told silently and in pictures.  We find the protagonist, Arturo, and his family, reverentially looking at plaques and memorials of men who took a stand in a time of need.  It was almost like the film was saying: “I know it’s a bit late now, but this is the story we really wanted to tell”.   And I was thinking: well I wish you had, rather than the story of Arturo and his interpretation of the events.
The Mafia Kills Only In Summer is set in Palermo in the seventies and eighties when the mafia were running rampant in that city.  If there was money to be made they were into it. And if you didn’t co-operate they were into you!  It took a fearless judiciary and incorruptible police to get rid of them.  But it also took sacrifice and many uncompromising men were killed - gunned down, blown up.
We meet Arturo as an infant.  Through him we learn that at that time the Mafia was so pervasive in Sicily he even had a childhood fear of them, like a child might have of venomous spiders  - “There’s one!" he says pointing to a man in the street.
“They kill only in Summer” his father reassures him.
Arturo wants to be a journalist.  "Yes!"we cheer - "Grow up Arturo and bring these monsters down with your fearless reporting".  But no.  No story here.  We just plod along.
We jump forward and find Arturo in a lowly position with the media and still obsessed with a girl he has known since childhood.  There’s a bit of cuteness to their relationship but neither of them are interesting enough for us to give much of a damn about them.  
The better story - the overcoming of corruption and the eviction of the mafia - is mostly told to us through newsreel footage and occasional re-enactment, which serves as a background to their uneventful and twee affair.  For me, by focusing on such uninteresting people the film itself has become the same - uninteresting.
It’s an alluring title, I was expecting so much more, but to be honest I found  The Mafia Kills Only In Summer rather dull and disappointing.