Frequency
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Gregory Hoblit |
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| Distributor | New Line Home Video |
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| Frequency is really two different—though inextricably linked—movies. First, the emotional drama of a father and son reunited after 30 years of separation. Then there’s a science fiction thriller, in which a couple of chance solar storms, occurring exactly 30 years apart, can provide the agency through which the father and son can communicate using the very same ham radio in parallel time frames of 1969 and 1999. The son is John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), a cop, and his father is Frank (Dennis Quaid), a firefighter who died on the job when John was 6, which… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Frequency is really two different—though inextricably linked—movies. First, the emotional drama of a father and son reunited after 30 years of separation. Then there’s a science fiction thriller, in which a couple of chance solar storms, occurring exactly 30 years apart, can provide the agency through which the father and son can communicate using the very same ham radio in parallel time frames of 1969 and 1999. The son is John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), a cop, and his father is Frank (Dennis Quaid), a firefighter who died on the job when John was 6, which just happens to be tomorrow for Frank when he and his now-adult son begin talking across time. This is great for John, because now he can warn his dad about the upcoming fire and avert the catastrophe that left him fatherless for most of his life. Accomplishing this gives John new memories of his life with Dad, but unfortunately alters the course of a serial killer, with tragic effect on John’s family history. Since John’s a cop, and the case he’s working on turns out to be the same unsolved case from 30 years before, he and his father work together over the ham radio to solve the case and hopefully avert the tragedy that befell their family.
Time-travel stories have always been problematic, demanding either an extra degree of credulity on the part of the audience or an extra level of explanation on the part of storytellers, which is invariably cumbersome. Frequency handles the troublesome time paradoxes by having John explain how, having altered his past, he now experiences both timelines, as if he’s had two pasts that converge in his present. And as changes continue to be wrought in John’s past, we see him becoming more and more confused. No doubt the audience can sympathize, at least those of us who try to follow the ramifications of the rapidly accruing time fractures. Luckily, the bond between father and son is so strongly realized in the deeply felt performances of both Caviezel and Quaid that you don’t even need to consider the science fiction elements in order to enjoy the film. But if you can suspend your disbelief long enough to allow for the possibility of time shifts, you’ll have a far richer experience. —Jim Gay
Barnes and Noble
With a nod to movies past, Frequency synthesizes style and fright to create a thriller for the ages. A freak occurrence in the aurora borealis rewrites the future for John Sullivan (James Caviezel), a policeman still recovering from the death of his father (Dennis Quaid), a heroic fireman, 30 year earlier. Using his father’s old ham radio one night, John connects with a strangely familiar man—eerily, but unmistakably, his father. This fantastic connection inadvertently alters past, present, and future for both of them, as father and son must reunite to stop a serial killer who has targeted John’s mother. Quaid brings his usual charm to the fatherly role, and Caviezel, best remembered for his breakout role in The Thin Red Line, makes a great, moody foil. Screenwriter Toby Emmerich’s script is tight and multilayered, allowing director Gregory Hoblit to successfully revisit the psychological terror he mastered in Fallen and Primal Fear. With great ease, Hoblit juggles an amalgam of genres—thriller, science fiction, and family drama—recalling the uncanny fantasy of The Twilight Zone and Field of Dreams as much as the suspense of Backdraft and The Fugitive. Patricia Kim O’Cone
