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Review

Director Ferrara and screenwriter Nicholas St. John continue their exploration of morality and personal responsibility, but with a much greater degree of success than their previous collaboration, the awful The Addiction. This time around, the gangster genre is the target, and the pair fashion a tale of organized crime in the 1930s, where the families of two surviving brothers (Walken, Penn) come together at the untimely funeral of a third. Unfortunately, St. John and Ferrara have a lot more to tell their audience than a basic tale of family loyalty and revenge. While The Funeral is interesting and its ensemble achieves an almost Coppola-level of success in the period gangster film genre, the film is overburdened with moralizing philosophy. And the heavy-handed ending undermines the successful drama and tragedy the fine cast worked so hard to establish.