Dead Again (1991)

Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent adaptation.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Branagh's ambitious past-life thriller is very much a product of its time, and seen today it feels rather dated: there are cheesy haircuts and outfits galore. Plus, the viewer never really believes Branagh's American accent, which remains distracting throughout the movie. Yet DEAD AGAIN succeeds where other movies fail: it feels original for the most part, and it possesses enough inventiveness on the part of Branagh the director to make it a fairly engaging viewing experience. The film has many overblown moments where good ol' Ken emulates Hitchcock and the like, especially in the use of some silly slow-motion towards the end. But the black-and-white sequences set during the '40s are pretty good and, although fairly slow-paced, the film manages to retain the interest throughout.The casting is also pretty decent; Branagh and Thompson are here teamed up again, and both of them are required to act in many different styles. Derek Jacobi, another regular, is excellent as the stuttering hypnotist, and God, doesn't he look creepy without the beard? There are other stars too who make an impact, from Robin Williams' foul-mouthed supermarket worker (grimy and paranoid) to Wayne Knight (JURASSIC PARK) as Branagh's buddy. One rather odd thing is the last twenty minutes of the film, which finishes up the mystery and drama side of the story after offering a nice twist, and becomes standard psycho-thriller territory, along the lines of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and all the others that were popular at the time. The diverse range of elements and the passion put into this movie make it a standalone piece of cinema.

I agree with the guy a few reviews ago that pointed out all the plot holes (quite a few of which I didn't notice).It's just TOO unbelievable. You try to suspend disbelief just to have fun but couldn't do it.The ending was incredibly silly. The twists seemed pointless. The acting was very good all around, though. It DID hold my attention until the very end, which is a plus. Once it was over I felt like I wasted my time.If you want a good mystery with great twists, watch Wild Things. The first twist in THAT movie was a shock! This movie, the twists were like, yeah, OK, why??

Dead Again is one of the best films of the 1990s. It is a psychological thriller that will require your full attention. This includes the opening credits which provide critical background information. In the opening credits, you see old newspaper clippings from 1949 about the shocking death of pianist Margaret Strauss (Emma Thompson). Based on the clippings, we learn that Margaret's husband, conductor-composer Robert Strauss (Kenneth Branagh) claims a thief killed Margaret but he is later arrested for the crime after his fingerprints are found on a pair of scissors. Testimony from witnesses as well as his refusal to testify results in a guilty verdict and Strauss gets the death penalty. Most of the newspaper articles were written by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia) who visits Strauss at his request on the day of his execution. Strauss asks Baker to print that "He loved his wife and that he will love her forever" while getting his hair sheard with scissors by one of the guards. Baker asks Strauss why he is not afraid of death and Strauss states that he is not because things are "far from over". When Baker states, "But you still killed her, didn't you?", Strauss gets up and whispers something in his ear. Strauss is then escorted down the hallway to the death chamber. As Baker gets up to leave, he looks at the newspaper that was next to Strauss and notices the scissors that the guard had laid down are missing. We then see the scissors in Strauss's hand as Baker runs down the hallway yelling "stop" to Strauss. At the end of the hallway is a vision of Margaret Strauss and then we see Robert Strauss reach out and begin to stab her. We're instantly snapped forward into color (from black and white) and a modern day Emma Thompson awakes from her nightmare where she appears to live on the same property as where the Strauss' used to live. Now all of this happens during the first five minutes of the movie and if you're not hooked, then something's really wrong! The film goes back and forth between the past (always shown in black and white) and current day (shown in color). Suspicions abound as we piece together details from past lives and how they relate to the current characters. In doing so, we are left on the edge of our seats as new facts and twists are revealed.This is a "thinking person's movie" with a load of originality. If you like Hitchcock movies or you find films like the Matrix and Inception to be thrilling because of the twists and/or strong focus you must have while watching, you'll appreciate this film.

Well, I guess it's not really "karmic" revenge. It's just plain revenge behind the murder.Whoever wrote this piece of confusing comic/mystery/melodrama was channeling Madame Blavatsky, who apparently emerges from time to time from behind the veil of Isis.There was a scissors murder in 1948. A composer (Branagh) was executed for the murder of his wife (Thompson). Somehow, a reporter (Garcia) seems to have been involved but he's just a red herring. Forget him.Anyway, it's now forty years later, 1988 that is, and Emma Thompson is an amnesiac taken in by Branagh because she has no identity and nowhere to go. A hypnotist and antique dealer insinuates his way into the relationship that, as the sophisticated viewer will have already guessed, has turned physically demonstrative. The hypnotist age regresses Thompson and she begins reliving the 1948 case in which she was the victim.Branagh, a fundamentally decent guy, consults Robin Williams, an ex shrink who now runs a Carniceria. (This is Los Angeles.) Williams explains all about karma to Branagh and advises him to kill Thompson before she kills him. The two are reliving the 1948 murder only the genders are reversed.But Williams is a red herring too. The whole business about karma is a red herring. And at the end, when the villain tries to murder Thompson with a pair of antique scissors -- hint, hint -- that's a lot of baloney too because Thompson has no connection with the earlier murder, as far as it's possible to tell. She just happens to be a lady who lost her memory and came up with these weird stories under hypnosis.What a fine cast. Kenneth Branagh looks young and innocent but isn't really convincing in this relatively light part. I haven't seen his renditions of Shakespeare. Emma Thompson is a splendid actress and looks very appealing without being in the least sultry and certainly not Hollywood gorgeous. She has the open, wide-eyed, innocent features of a loving pet dog, some kind of miniature. Not a poodle, though. More like a happy-go-lucky terrier, one of those pets that's always wagging its tail and has its tongue hanging out of its mouth, maybe poised and hoping you'll toss a tennis ball. Andy Garcia has sleek features, is an underused performer, and should choose his parts more carefully. All of them live in those pretentious mansions of Southern California except for Jacobi and his dear mother, who are consigned to one of those cluttered little spaces out of Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop." If anyone can make sense out of this underlighted mish mosh, will he please let me know? I need some hints too, you know.