Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again is the best 90s thriller you never saw!

Kenneth Branagh’s 1991 thriller Dead Again is a mystery gem that’s aching to be rediscovered.

Last Updated on December 9, 2024

It’s strange how the movies you see as a child tend to stick with you throughout the years. Odder still are the movies that have a profound personal impact on you because of one specific scene. Over the years, I’ve written about plenty of them for this long-running feature I’ve done on JoBlo called The Best Movie You Never Saw. For me, one such movie is the 1991 thriller Dead Again, which was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also co-stars along with his then-wife, Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, Andy Garcia and the late, great Robin Williams (in an unbilled role). I saw this at ten years old on the Canadian equivalent of HBO, First Choice, and it had a profound impact on me for one specific reason I’ll get to shortly.

But first, some background on this often overlooked film. In the late eighties, many considered Kenneth Branagh, who received dual best actor and best director nominations for his film of Henry V, the heir apparent of Laurence Olivier. Having been a star at RADA, and one of the bright lights of the London stage before moving on to film, his ascendency was quick, but Branagh seemingly bristled at being typecast in upper-crust English parts. While adapting Shakespeare’s works for the screen has arguably been his life’s work, he clearly relished the opportunity to branch out a bit with the noir-inspired Dead Again, which was written by the great Scott Frank (The Lookout, Little Man Tate, Get Shorty, Out of Sight & Logan).

In it, Branagh plays a wisecracking Los Angeles private eye named Mike Church. An orphan, he’s recruited by the church he was raised in to help identify a beautiful amnesiac (Emma Thompson) who turned up on their doorstep. With the help of an antiques dealer/ hypnotist (Derek Jacobi), the woman, who Church calls Grace, reveals she’s the reincarnation of a concert pianist who was murdered by her famous composer husband, Roman Strauss back in 1949. Branagh and Thompson, who were married at the time, play dual roles, as Church/Roman, and Grace/Margaret.

Riding high off a wave of strong reviews, Dead Again proved to be a word-of-mouth hit in the fall of 1991. Opening at number one at the box office and staying there for several weeks, it grossed $38 million (a lot in 1991 dollars) and was a much-rented tape in those Blockbuster Video days. Even still, in the thirty-three years since it was released, Dead Again sunk into minor obscurity and is often overlooked when discussing the careers of anyone involved, even Branagh, despite it being the film that broke him and Thompson through to an American audience.

A love letter to film noir, Dead Again takes place in two distinct periods, 1940s L.A (shot in gorgeous black and white) and the “modern-day” equivalent. The flashbacks are done in an eccentric noir style, while the latter scenes opt for the high style of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The mystery is quite gripping, and the romantic subplot between Branagh’s detective and Thompson’s amnesiac works well. The two had great chemistry, and both make pretty admirable attempts at American accents. Andy Garcia also steals scenes as a dissolute party-hound in the forties section, only to be laid low by time in the modern section. Branagh’s stage mentor, Derek Jacobi, also looks to be having the time of his life as an antique dealer/ hypnotist drawn into the mystery – it’s the type of role Claude Rains would have played in a 1940’s version.

Given Branagh’s anointing by Hollywood as the “next big thing”, he was able to recruit a lot of popular actors for small parts, including karate-kick throwing Campbell Scott (riding high off Dying Young and Singles) and the late, great Robin Williams, who plays a disgraced psychiatrist reduced to working as a supermarket stock boy. Williams took no billing, but his part is an important one, with him delivering the central thesis of the movie in his big scene with Branagh and Thompson, and he more than holds his own opposite them. Yet another reminder of how much we lost when he passed away.

So, what was it about this film that stayed with me? Beyond the fact that I always thought it was a fun thriller (even if it was only about ten years old when I first saw it), there’s a scene that scarred me in it toward the end. As the mystery deepens, Branagh’s Church interviews Andy Garcia’s Gray Baker, who was a reporter in love with Margaret in the forties section of the film. One of the movie’s recurring gags is that Church is trying to quit smoking, and when he meets the 1991 version of Baker, he notices that the man has had his larynx removed. There’s a bit where Garcia smokes a cigarette through a hole in his throat that absolutely repulsed me as a kid and made me vow to never take up smoking.

Fast-forward to 2021, when Branagh was making the rounds on the awards-circuit for his film Belfast. I was invited to the Los Angeles premiere of the film, and was lucky enough to meet Branagh at a party. Branagh, who likes to be called Ken despite his knighting, was a super nice guy, and when we were chatting, I casually mentioned to him how I never started smoking because of this scene, and he got a huge laugh out of it.

So, in a way, Kenneth Branagh and Andy Garcia are largely responsible for the fact that I’ve never been a smoker (incidentally – Garcia was at the same party and Branagh told me I should tell him my story- but it turns out he bailed on the party early and I missed my chance). That little tidbit aside, Dead Again is a really fun thriller (with a great score by Patrick Doyle) that’s worth checking out. You can find it on DVD/Blu-ray, and it’s also available on streaming (but no 4K yet). Give it a shot!