Dead Again

January 1, 2007 - In the early Nineties, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were husband and wife. With their youthful energy and charming British accents, Ken and Em appeared ready to assume the role of Hollywood Super Couple. I think that Branagh's ego and, ironically, his film version of Frankenstein eventually got in the way. But, before everything went bust, the couple teamed up to star in a neat little 1991 film called Dead Again.

Thompson plays a woman haunted by chilling nightmares. The dreams are so terrifying that she eventually wakes up with a bad case of amnesia and an inability to speak. She manages to sleepwalk her way to a Catholic orphanage, and the kind folks there call on P.I. Mike Church (Branagh) to find out who she is. Church decides to call the mystery woman Grace.

The search leads them to Franklin (Derek Jacobi), who runs an antique shop and is also skilled in the ways of hypnosis. He takes Grace back to a previous life in which lovers named Margaret and Roman happen to look an awful lot like Grace and Mike.

Overall review: *** I saw this movie when it first came out and liked it a lot. It's not quite as surprising the second time around because the clues are more obvious. But, it's still enjoyable. There are two very memorable scenes. One is enough to make any smoker quit on the spot. In the other, one of the characters meets a very gruesome fate.

The supporting cast includes Andy Garcia, Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) and Robin Williams. The only thing I didn't like were the American accents used by Branagh and Thompson. They just didn't sound quite right.