Dead Again

Dead Again centres on Mike Church, a Los Angeles private investigator who specializes in tracking down missing people. A convent asks him to help a young woman with amnesia; he calls her Grace because she cannot recall her own name. She is haunted by nightmares set in the 1940s, in which a pianist is killed with a pair of scissors, and an antiques dealer and hypnotist named Franklyn Madson uses hypnosis to draw out what lies behind them. What surfaces connects Grace, and Church himself, to the 1949 murder of Margaret Strauss and the execution of her husband Roman, a composer.

Kenneth Branagh directed the film, his second behind the camera after Henry V, and he stars in it, playing both Roman and Church. Emma Thompson plays Grace and Margaret, with Andy García as Gray Baker and supporting turns from Lois Hall, Richard Easton and Jo Anderson. Scott Frank wrote the screenplay, and Charles H. Maguire and Lindsay Doran produced for Mirage Enterprises.

The film was released in August 1991 and runs 107 minutes, blending crime, mystery, romance and thriller elements. Against a budget of about 15 million dollars it took roughly 38 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from 52 reviews, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4 out of 10 from around 440 votes, a gap that suggests critics responded to it more warmly than the wider audience did. Branagh's next film as director was Peter's Friends in 1992.