For those who have their doubts about Kenneth Branagh's talents outside Shakespeare, this ludicrous thriller provides further ammunition. To start with, the title should have a question mark after it.

Is Emma Thompson really going to meet the same fate at the end of this life as she did in the last?

She's an amnesiac given into the charge of detective Mike Church (Branagh) and seems to be having nightmares about her past life.

Hypnotist Derek Jacobi appears from nowhere to take her back into a past that involves a composer murdering his wife with scissors, a scenario that Church soon establishes happened 40 years before.

It gets sillier: Emma turns out to be an artist whose studio is covered with scissors, real and drawn. Robin Williams is introduced quite superfluously as a psychiatrist working in a meat freezer.

The music screeches every time a pair of scissors comes into shot, while you just long for the whole thing to get going. But then none of this story hangs together.

Andy Garcia's old-age makeup is good for a laugh, and even Thompson looks hard-pushed to keep a straight face towards the end.