Product: Frequency (2000)
Rating: 5.0
Making it Right
Frequency is a remarkable movie. I just discovered it and am glad to see that others continue to add their comments here. First, I must applaud the premise - the use of a ham radio as the device that connects father and son in a supernatural way. My uncle was a ham radio operator and even taught classes. It had a tremendous mystique all its own.Dennis Quaid is fabulous. He effortlessly portrays Frank Sullivan, a man who is passionate about his values, devoted to his family, and larger than life as a fireman. The movie opens to this father's heroic rescue of a pair of workers trapped underground after a tanker crash. He comes right home to the wife he loves, the son he loves -- John, his "Little Chief" -- in the home he loves; he has it all. Moving forward thirty years, we meet the adult John. James Caviezel tears me to pieces in these early scenes as we learn that this father died in a fire 30 years ago. John is a cop working homicide. He is still living in the house he grew up in. He did not completely recover from his father's death. He drinks to find numbness and his girlfriend (who he loves) walks out on him. But he is a good man in his own right. His mother's phone number is on his speed-dial and he takes the time to stay involved in her life. On this difficult night in October 1999, as he approaches the anniversary of his father's death, his childhood friend Gordo (Noah Emmerich - The Truman Show) helps set up his father's old ham radio that they find looking for fishing gear under the stairs. Later, with the aurora borealis glistening overhead, father and son make contact on this radio over the distance of 30 years. Awesome! My favorite scene on the DVD is captioned "Catching Up," and takes place after a skeptical Frank, up to his ears in smoke and flames, follows his son's frantic warning that he should "go the other way" to safety rather than the death that John remembered. On returning home unscathed, Frank, accidentally wakes his six-year old son, evolving into a joyous bike-riding lesson. He then finds adult John's voice on the ham and they catch up. At one point, Frank asks adult John if he is still his "Little Chief" and James Caviezel's tearful reply "I'm trying to be" is profound. Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel run with their roles here. They are two great American actors at work.The entire cast is wonderful. Elizabeth Mitchell as wife and mother plays so much love and strength into her role. The screenplay, by Toby Emmerich, brother of Noah, is tight, tender and imaginative. (The brothers do a great commentary together on the DVD special features.) The crime-thriller sub-plot is gripping and the ending satisfying.