20 Funerals

If you saw D.J Naylor on Dead Heist and been fan of him since (me lol). This movie is created by Swirl Films which also made Dead Heist movie. This movie was made before Dead Heist.However let's focus on conclusion of the review. If your fan of action independent movie. This is the kind of movie for you. Possibly the ONLY movie that D.J Naylor stars on other then Dead Heist.However the action scenes are somewhat not connected, but the acting is good for a independent film. The music in the movie can express the emotion theme of the scene.I like the film alot, since the story is outstanding, and like the actors. Although in the script they always add "F***ing," "Motherf***ers," and "s**" as a verb in the sentence. Which kind of annoys me, but I tend to deal with it.However it's not a professional movie, as I said it's a independent film. But it's a good movie to watch. A recommendation for D.J Naylor fans (if there's any) Also if your fan of rap or love gangsta rap artists. In this film it features alot of well known artists such as Lil Jon for example.A good independent cop/crime drama film.3/5 stars (amazon state four stars as "like" film so that's why I put it four stars, but my critical rate is 3 out of 5)-Joanne1375's Son Perry

DJ Naylor's first starring effort makes this one worth the purchase rice. The man is a talent on the rise.

Even though it plays out like one long urban rap video, 20 Funerals is still a lot of fun. The premise is quite simple, but it's also ingenious. Four narcs get pissed off when one of their own is murdered on the streets, and they decide to clean up the city outside the due process of law. It's a scenario you could actually see happening, and that's what makes it so enthralling. Together they compile a list of the twenty worst thugs and start executing them.Of course, things go wrong. The thugs don't like being preyed upon, so they call in an assassin of their own. Then the Police Department takes an interest in all these slayings, and in a really interesting twist our protagonists get assigned to investigate their own homicides. (Of course, these are narcotics agents and why they would be assigned homicide cases is never explained. But, hey, this is Hollywood.) Then there are internal divisions within the group, which makes for even more tension. And in the midst of all these complexities, the bodies just keep adding up.The problem is that this film only runs for about 80 minutes, which is a killing every four minutes or so, and that doesn't leave much time for the niceties of character development. But that probably isn't this director's strong point anyway. Instead, the film is stocked with clichéd archetypes and gangsta stereotypes. You could probably make a case of inadvertent racism here, what with the white cops dusting off the black thugs, but that probably wasn't the intention. Still, there are lots of holes to the film, such as why these renegade cops would go after the gold-toothed lowlifes when there are so many bigger forms of evil in the world?What the filmmaker did intend, though, was to give us a flashy, in your face action flick made on a shoe-string budget, and in this he succeeded. He probably didn't have the resources to draw this out to the two-hour mark, which is sad because the short run time really cuts into the film's skeletal structure, and lots of really important stuff gets glossed over. What's more, a major portion of the film is little more than gunplay montages scored over with angst-ridden urban rap music, sort of like watching MTV2 at 4 in the morning.Still, this movie is incredibly enjoyable, the dialogue sometimes witty, and the various rapper-actors turn out incredible cameo performances. Overall this movie achieves what it sets out to accomplish, and if this director can find more exposure then he has an incredible career ahead of him.

20 Funerals is the latest film to hit DVD from Wilmington, NC filmmaker Anghus Houvouras (Fearsome, Thugs Got Game). It's the story of a group of cops who -after the death of a fellow officer- decide to use some unconventional methods. Twenty names make up their list of scum that must be removed from the street in order to clean things up. The plan comes with a strong set of rules in order to keep things organised, but some rules are made to be broken. Things begin to turn sour when the cops are inevitably called upon to investigate the cases they're creating themselves.It's a clever concept that could easily have been created by the mind of Quinton Tarantino and has some impressive dialog to match. This film is a must see for anyone with a dark sense of humour or love for violence, action, hip-hop, or simply, independent cinema.Being an independent filmmaker myself with many influences and heroes, I know how easy it is to stick nods to personal favourites into a script. Quite often these can come across out of place and character. But in 20 Funerals the writer/director manages to tie in references to pop culture and Greek mythology and use them to the scripts advantage. He is able to add depth and realism to the characters and the world they live in.Clocking in at just less than eighty minutes, the film is a tad on the short side. However apart from adding three of four more funerals, there's little that could be done with this. The film tells its story in a clear and cool way but does come with a few faults. As mentioned by a previous reviewer the opening sequence doesn't come across too strong, but this is soon forgiven and forgot when the film sets itself on track. What follows is a set of great performances from the leads, including DJ Naylor, Mark Mench, and the majority of the supporting cast, backed up by a solid Hip-Hop soundtrack, and great visuals.I was hooked from the moment the 20 Funerals plan came into play and stayed gripped throughout. With plenty of plot twists, character developments, and outside party intervention, the film kept me on the edge of my seat. While watching you get a strong sense of the fun and hard work put in by the cast and crew which makes the whole experience even more gratifying. I look forward with great anticipation for this exciting filmmakers next piece `Dead Heist'.