The Funeral (1996): B

With The Funeral, Abel Ferrara revisits many of his trademark obsessions – madness, honor, duty, loyalty, sexual dysfunction, and Catholic guilt and repentance – via the flashback-heavy story of the funeral of communist gangster Johnny Tempio (Vincent Gallo) at the house of his mob boss brother Ray (Christopher Walken). It’s a psychologically strung-out tale stuffed full of ideas and inspired moments, the best of which is a torturously powerful scene in which Ray, at the moment of truth, struggles mightily with the justness of avenging Johnny’s murderer. Yet despite its trio of superb lead performances – the finest of which is Chris Penn’s explosively coiled turn as semi-insane third bro Chez – the film (written by long-time Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John) often finds itself too preoccupied for its own good, choosing to ruminatively free-flow from one theme to another rather than taking the time to incisively explore some of its more intriguing topics (such as the brothers’ interactions with Benicio Del Toro’s union-busting crime bigwig Gaspare). And Ferrara largely short-shrifts his actresses, giving them little to do but either deliver inelegant moral-imparting speeches (Annabella Sciorra and Isabella Rossellini) or sit around in the background and look blankly attractive (Gretchen Mol).