Product: Frequency (2000)
Rating: 4.0
Tense Science Fiction that borders on syrupy sentimentality
Just a short and quick recommendation here... a wild two thumbs up for FREQUENCY, the new Dennis Quaid flick. It's great science fiction in the tradition of the old Outer Limits series. It really played like an extended Outer Limits or Twilight Zone show, with great character development, suspense and action. It's also a good mystery!The plot revolves around strange sunspot activity which makes it possible for a NY City policeman to use a ham radio to talk to his father, a former NY City fireman who died 30 years previously in a fire. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the son warns the father of his impending death and saves the man's life -- altering forever the future timeline in a strange and HORRIBLE way that the two race through the remaining two-thirds of the film to set right.The filmmakers try really hard to put current quantum physics explanations for what's going on into the film, using an interview with a physics professor with Dick Cavett on the tele in the background on night... it's subtle, yet obvious to the audience that their conversation has to do with the events unfolding in the narrative. This of course anchors the film in the realm of science fiction rather than science fantasy or scifi, and gives it an air of suggestible believability that helps propel the plot foreward.It also has one of the most suspenseful and tense opening action sequences of any film I've seen in recent history -- a definite armrest grabber! Three solid stars for this entertaining and at times engaging film which at least attempts to deviate from the old cliche' of time travel plots, even if it fails in a few of those attempts. It's not easily predictable, but once you get a taste for the director's methodology, you'll start figuring things out. And the film's ending is a bit overly sentimental, with drawn out slo-mo sequences that border on the worst of the old Kodak "special moments" tv adverts.