Herald rating: * * *
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel, Elizabeth Mitchell, Andre Braugher
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Rating: M (low-level violence)
Running Time: 118 minutes
Screening: Advance previews this weekend at Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas; opens Thursday
Review: Russell Baillie
It's the little ideas that appeal most in this cosmic thriller about a son
who makes contact with his long dead father via time-travelling radio communication.
When it starts getting bigger ones - like a serial killer subplot which runs away in the film's final stages and heads to an ending that makes your teeth hurt - Frequency loses what felt special about it in the first place.
But mostly it balances its mix of lo-fi sci-fi and its father-son airwave reunion rather neatly, making it easy to suspend disbelief about its set-up and resist the temptation to dwell on the logic gaps in its time-warp.
That's mostly down to the sheer charm of the scenes between the two leads, Caviezel and Quaid, as the modern-day 36-year-old New York cop and his 1969 firefighter father respectively.
As John Sullivan, who has trouble remembering the father he lost when he was 6, the quietly contained performance of newcomer Caviezel helps to lift the material out of its sentimental urges, to make it something genuinely affecting.
Even if the two do spend a lot of time talking about that ol' American guy conversational standby - baseball - with Quaid's Frank Sullivan seemingly resisting the urge to bet the house on the next world series despite the hot tips he is getting from the future.
Of course, the hottest tip he gets saves his life, but that sets in train other events which echo down the ages.
But once Frequency moves away from those nightly sessions of male bonding via ham radio, it becomes a tad predictable, even with the many twists that serial killer tangent delivers.
But it intrigues throughout with its homely variation on the old time-bend, and we're not giving away too much of the ending to say it's the best anti-smoking advert you'll probably ever see.
