Kenneth Branagh’s romantic mystery is lively, overcomplicated and willing to make a fool of itself. We enjoyed its appetite for melodrama, but the storytelling and the central romance cannot sustain all that enthusiasm.
Dead Again is a lively romantic thriller let down by muddled storytelling and a couple who ought to generate more heat. Kenneth Branagh directs it with an appetite for the extravagant behaviour and improbable entanglements of 1940s mystery fiction. We can see the attraction: a love affair need not be sensible to make a good film. At 107 minutes, though, this one gives its complications more attention than its lovers.
Scott Frank’s screenplay brings murder, hypnosis and reincarnation into the same story, which is a substantial request for belief even by the standards of romantic melodrama. The pleasure ought to lie in watching those unlikely elements fit together. Too often, an explanation leaves us wanting another explanation, and Peter E. Berger’s editing cannot quite make the accumulating complications feel like a clear sequence of discoveries. Even a past-life mystery needs to make clear why one development follows another.
Branagh plays both Mike Church and Roman Strauss, with Emma Thompson as Grace and Margaret Strauss, and the doubling gives the actors plenty to occupy them. Branagh is most enjoyable when he lets humour into the performance; his willingness to look faintly ridiculous helps keep the whole thing from becoming solemn. Thompson commits herself to the melodrama, but together they generate less romantic heat than the story needs. That matters in a film which asks us to believe love might extend across more than one lifetime.
Matthew F. Leonetti’s cinematography makes the changes between colour and black and white worth watching in themselves. We felt a small, pleasurable shiver when the film slipped into black and white: its enthusiasm for making the past spooky got through to us. Tim Harvey’s production design also helps the old-fashioned mystery feel like somewhere worth spending time. We wanted more opportunity to enjoy the surroundings before being asked to untangle another explanation.
Patrick Doyle’s music helps sell the melodrama, although we occasionally wanted less encouragement to feel something for this couple. The difficulty is that the film keeps urging us to take their romance more seriously than their chemistry allows. Andy Garcia and Robin Williams, who plays Cozy Carlisle, add interest to a supporting cast that is often more entertaining than the central pairing. Their presence also makes us wish the film gave its actors more room between the complications.
The difficulty with this sort of romantic mystery is knowing when to stop inviting laughter. Branagh’s enthusiasm carries us through a fair amount of overstatement, but he keeps pushing after the joke has landed. The weak links in Frank’s construction become harder to overlook as the film asks for greater emotional investment. We can enjoy the acting and still feel that the people involved deserved a story that fitted together better.
There is enough wit and spooky pleasure here for an evening devoted to elaborate nonsense. Anyone hoping for a tightly reasoned mystery or a romance that makes the complications worth enduring should be cautious. Come for the melodrama, and be prepared to do some forgiving.
