Frequency

FREQUENCY

Rating: A
James Caviezel plays a 36-year old cop whose relationship with his live-in girlfriend has just gone in the dumper. Little does he know his problems are just beginning. The sun is currently experiencing solar flares the likes it hasn't seen in 30 years, and the last time coincides with the time Caviezel's father (Dennis Quaid) was killed battling a warehouse fire. Through a series of coincidences, Caviezel boots up Dad's old ham radio and is astonished to hear his father broadcasting on the other end. Seems those sun spots have elevated "radio interference" into a whole new dimension, and the two are conversing across thirty years in time on the same ham radio. Does the FCC even allow this?

Here's a Net-Monster Tip® for all those of you tempted to meddle with time: for goodness sake, don't do it. You'll just screw something up royally. The movie Back to the Future, plus assorted episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek have all reached this conclusion independently; either you'll end up never having been born, or you'll wake up to find the Nazis won World War 2. Neither of these can be viewed as a good thing.

Unfortunately, Caviezel is apparently not much of a movie buff, and his hours on the job must prevent him from viewing much late-night TV, because he goes ahead and meddles. He warns Quaid about the impending warehouse fire, and succeeds in saving his life. HOWEVER (and I warned you this would happen), his actions somehow cause the "Nightingale Killer" to rack up ten victims instead of his original three, and one of the additions to the list is none other than Caviezel's own sweet mother. The Nazis coming to power suddenly doesn't seem so bad...

Okay, stand up and shout "This is ridiculous!" and get it out of your system. Because if you can accept the plot premise, writer Toby Emmerich (whose brother Noah plays Gordy in the film) has penned a neat little thriller here, as Caviezel and Quaid team up across the decades to track down the serial killer and undo the damage they've wrought. He plays the "communicating across time" angle for all it's worth: In one scene, Quaid burns a message into his desktop with a soldering iron, and it magically appears letter by letter on the same desk (thirty years later) at which Caviezel is sitting. In another, he stashes a wallet in a hidden location, which Caviezel then retrieves a moment later thirty years in the future. To give credit where credit is due, this second scene was first done hilariously in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, but still, it's a clever touch.

Director Gregory Hoblit also deserves some of the credit. The imaginative manner in which he stages and films scenes such as the original meeting between Caviezel and Quaid on the ham radio, and that fateful warehouse fire, turns ordinary scenes into fascinating cinema. He takes time out to let the characters be human, but doesn't let the tension in the narrative slacken. Which isn't to say he doesn't occasionally misstep. There's a scene with Quaid in the killer's apartment late in the film which makes absolutely no sense. And the final sequence, which somehow turns into a music video, may taste to some like cotton candy covered with maple syrup. But overall, Frequency is a crowd-pleaser which fires on all cylinders.