Kenneth Branagh's second directorial effort makes his first one, Henry V, look downright modest. Any filmmaker (it bears repeating) will require no more taste or knowledge than the average high-school sophomore to think to impress somebody by aligning himself with Shakespeare. To attempt additionally to replicate the three-hatted juggling act of Laurence Olivier -- director, adapter, star -- and on one of the very same plays as Olivier to boot, he will certainly require a quantity of gall. But taste, no. Knowledge, not much. He will reveal himself much more fully where the road is less well marked. And while Henry V showed that Branagh at age twenty-eight (was he?) was no Olivier at age thirty-seven, Dead Again shows that two years later he is not even a Brian De Palma at a more closely equal age. It's something to do with murder, amnesia, and reincarnation -- the doctrine, for the benefit of Western skeptics, which holds that a departed soul will seek out a newly arriving body identical to the one it has just left, thus ensuring that there will always be a man on earth who looks exactly like Henry V and a woman who looks just like Princess Katharine. Or something like that. Something, anyway, that will sanction Mr. and Mrs. Branagh (Emma Thompson) to play two roles apiece. But although Branagh and his missus are attractive enough physically and are no doubt well-trained in technique, they lack -- how to put this tactfully? -- some, most, pretty nearly all, of the mystical glamour, the star power, the screen presence required to bring off this sort of Neo-Gothic Eyewash. And Branagh's directing style, as in Henry V, relies to almost a slothful and an oafish degree on blunt and artless closeups of overprojecting actors. Derek Jacobi, Andy Garcia, Hanna Schygulla, Robin Williams. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd