Dead Again (1991)
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Branagh's lame stab at a romantic psychological thriller makes no sense. Sloppily constructed and cut, riddled with clichés and cant, it tells the old tale of a tough, wisecrackin' LA private eye (Branagh) hired to discover the identity of a mute, amnesiac woman (inevitably Thompson). Her nightmares derive from a violent past, from which, it seems, only an eccentric hypnotist (Jacobi) can free her. The none-too-plausible and unexplained twist is that Em's flashbacks are to a previous life (1949) when she was a famous pianist and Ken was her famous composer hubby, who was executed for her murder. The leads are dreadful, and Garcia as a news-hack who fires the muso's jealousy, Schygulla as the muso's loyal German housekeeper, and Williams as the dick's defrocked shrink pal are all awfully misused. Could it be that nothing - not the overbearingly 'Hitchcockian' score, nor the OTT art direction - must distract our attention from the subtext: that Ken and Em are destined to dance through eternity together?Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Producer: Lindsay Doran, Charles H Maguire
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Andy Garcia, Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, Wayne Knight, Hanna Schygulla, Robin Williams, Campbell Scott, Richard Easton full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 108 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.



What do you think?
Post your review now