Product: Frequency (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Frequency's On the Right Wavelength
Frequency starts like a story you'd expect to hear from your grandfather, reagiling at the past, builing it up as a better time. But director Gregory Hoblit has no intention of letting this movie sit on it's laurels or to rely so heavily on this sentimental tripe we've been forced to endure too many times. Like Pleasantville it gentally tugs at our idealic recolections of the past before blantantly tearing them down before our eyes. That's when things really pick up and we realize that this isn't the movie New Line'd built it up as being. It's an edge of your seat thrill ride with intesity to spare and not the weepy overdone meaning-of-life story we've seen done to death since Titanic. Realitively unknown actor Jim Caviezel plays a New York cop still scared by the the loss of his firefighter dad (Dennis Quaid) thirty years ago. We bounce back and forth between time as both 1969 and 1999 are unfolding parrellel to eachother. One night while playing with his father's old ham radio Caviezel finds himself talking to his dad days before his death. After the typical skeptism you'd expect from any protagonist in a sci-fi yarn, he realizes that he's been given a second chance, one in which he can use to save his father's life. But there are unexpected consequeces to his fiddling with time, the most notable of which is the continuance of a serial killer who now goes on to kill seven more victims, one of which is his own mother (I won't give too much away). It's an interesting premise and overdone as it my be the serial killer gere is still facinating stuff. Reviews have hailed it as Back to the Future meets Seven and though both films are far superior Frequency does a remarkably seamless job of interweaving elements of the two. The DVD offers a few extended scenese (nothing too exciting) and commentary tracks which to my amazement include neither the director of it's notable stars. Still, the movies is good enough itself to justify it's purchase.