In the mid-1980s, Swedish actor Jan Jönson started a drama workshop at the Kumla maximum security prison. Realising that the inmates spent their days marking time, he introduced them to Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic, Waiting For Godot. Emmanuel Courcol's The Big Hit (2020) took its inspiration from Jönson's experience and CinemaItaliaUK returns with Emmanuel Courcol's remake, Grazie Ragazzi, which follows the original pretty closely. However, some fine performances make the exercise worthwhile.
Frustrated with dubbing porn films, middle-aged actor Antonio Cerami (Antonio Albanese) is persuaded by producer friend Michele (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) to supervise a theatre class at a prison outside Rome. Governor Laura Soprana (Sonia Bergamasco) isn't convinced the programme will prove beneficial, but she's willing to give it a go. However, Antonio has his doubts when only Christian (Gerhard Koloneci), Mignolo (Giorgio Montanini), and Damiano (Andrea Lattanzi) turn up for the first session and they are hardly enthusiastic.
Libyan refugee Aziz (Giacomo Ferrara) and Radu (Bogdan Ioardachioiu) turn up for the second meeting and they are enthused when their fellow inmates applaud their rendition of `The Tortoise and the Hare'. But Antonio has bigger plans and talks Michele into letting him stage a one-off production of Waiting For Godot, as if there's one thing prisoners understand, it's waiting.
Agreeing to commit wholeheartedly, the prisoners practice tongue twisters while rehearsing. Radu plays the tree, while Aziz and Christian take on Vladimir and Estragon, and Mignolo and Damiano are cast as Pozzo and Lucky. However, tough guy Diego (Vinicio Marchioni) does a deal with Christian to take his place and Antonio has no option but to acquiesce.
He does impose himself upon Diego, however, and cajoles the stuttering, illiterate Damiano into sticking with Lucky, even though he finds the lines difficult. The governor reminds him to stick to prison rules when he has the cast sneak out of visiting rooms to join him for an impromptu rehearsal. She's distrusts Diego and goes on a limb when Antonio insists he needs him. But, under pressure from Michele to make the play as professional, as possible, Antonio loses patience and storms out.
Laura reprimands the actors and points out that Antonio is working for free because he believes in them. Michele also rallies Antonio and he agrees to return. While rehearsing at night by shouting their lines from their cells, the cast annoy the other prisoners and Mignolo gets into a fight in the exercise yard. Antonio has to plead with Laura not to cancel the show and he bundles his actors into a minibus to show them the theatre.
Having enjoyed the freedom of the journey, the quintet are overawed by the stage. But Antonio reassures them that he has faith, even when Diego threatens not to go on because his son isn't in the audience. They start hesitantly and Michele is worried. But they warm to the task, with even Radu wrapping himself in a blanket to creep across the stage, as the scene fades to black.
Mignolo's wife, Damiano's sister, and Aziz's mother join Laura in the applause. Backstage, Antonio brims with pride that is reciprocated with gratitude. However, the prisoners are whisked away and feel humiliated at being searched on returning to the jail. Antonio brings them the reviews next morning and is amazed to learn that other theatres have contacted Michele about staging Godot and Laura agrees to a tour.
High spirits cause them to improvise on the first night and Antonio brings them back to earth with a bump when he claims that the audience was laughing at them not with them. They protest that they're still amateurs, but the row subsides when Radu picks up a guitar and sings a Romanian folk song. Driving home, Antonio confides to Laura that he has made a mess of his life and doesn't even know if his 30 year-old daughter (Liliana Bottone) will be coming home for Christmas.
The tour progresses through a montage that takes the troupe to Siena, Pisa, and Perugia. Antonio is appalled when they sneak out to a beauty parlour and Diego shaves off Damiano's moustache when he suggests they escape. But the performance is deeply moving and is topped by Diego spotting his son and Laura leading a standing ovation as they hug. As this is the last night, Antonio leaves some booze in the changing room, so that they feel emboldened to strip naked on their return to the prison so that there's nowhere for the guard to search.
Laura is angered by this insubordination and refuses Antonio permission to take the play to Rome's Teatro Argentina. However, he leaves her a DVD of the show and she uses it to persuade a senior judge (Imma Piro) into sanctioning a swan song. On stage, the actors are awestruck. But, as dignitaries take their seats, it dawns on Antonio that they have done a bunk and he rushes through the festive streets to find them.
With the audience slowhand clapping, he sidles on to the stage to apologise for the disappearance of the cast. But he delivers a poignant monologue about the realities of prison life and what the experience has taught him and his ensemble. Diego calls to explain that they had to take their chance, as Antonio bows in a spotlight. He understands completely, but knows their moment of liberty is fleeting, as the fugitives are rounded up with muscular efficiency.
Jönson turned his last night humiliation in Gothenburg into a one-man show that caught the attention of Samuel Beckett, who declared it the best thing that had ever happened to Waiting For Godot. A number of films have subsequently centred around acting classes behind bars, including Zeina Daccache's documentary, 12 Angry Lebanese (2009), Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die (2012), and David Mackenzie's Starred Up (2019). Both The Big Hit and Grazie Ragazzi echo their themes, but add a dash of cellblock wit that allows the directors to leaven their examination of such weighty topics as crime, incarceration, and emasculation.
Antonio Albanese genially holds things together, although we learn little about his career travails or the reasons for the estrangement from his daughter. Even less is revealed about the inmates, as though Milani and co-scenarist Michele Astori were scared of losing audience empathy by detailing the offences for which they had been convicted. Each player nimbly slips between his character and his stage persona, without stealing focus from his castmates. Notably, unlike the original, the prisoners are not presented as the butts of culture clash jokes, who are being exploited for not entirely altruistic reasons by Antonio and Laura.
Sonia Bergamasco is typically sincere in a sketchily written role, while Fabrizio Bentivoglio gets by on star wattage as the theatre owner whose motives aren't always apparent. Nicola Rignanese contributes some deft comic relief as the guard who cuts the inmates some slack after initially being hostile to the enterprise. But Milani leaves us in no doubt that serving a sentence is psychologically taxing, as he and cinematographer Saverio Guarna contrast the spartan conditions of the prison with the beauty of the countryside and the urban glories that tempt the convicts into waiting no longer.