Frequency Review
by Mark R Leeper (mleeper AT lucent DOT com)May 5th, 2000
FREQUENCY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: An unusual solar phenomenon allows a 1999 police detective to talk to his father
back in 1969, just days before the father's
death. Can the past be changed and if so what
will it do to the present. James Caviezel and
Dennis Quaid star in a fast-paced and tense
science fiction film that is strongly
reminiscent of TIME AFTER TIME. The film is
gripping, but the use of ideas do not bear close scrutiny. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to
+4)
One of the best science fiction films of the 1970s was Nicholas Meyer's TIME AFTER TIME. The rather fantastic and dubious premise of this film was that H. G. Wells was not only an unknowing friend of Jack the Ripper, he also had built a real, functioning time machine. The Ripper escapes the police by taking the time machine to 1979 and Wells has to follow and try to capture the Ripper. One would think that a time machine and the ability to retrieve knowledge from the future might be useful in capturing a serial killer, but Wells finds that it is a mixed blessing. These same ideas are revisited in FREQUENCY, albeit without a time machine.
The film begins October 10, 1999, at a time of solar flares and sunspot activity. (The real height of solar activity was April 7, 2000, just three weeks before the national release of FREQUENCY. Ironically that would have not been good for the script, however, which was contrived to take place during a World Series.) Commentators talking about the solar activity point out that string theory says that time is fluid. (What that has to do with sunspots and solar flares in the commentators' minds is not clear. But it does set the stage for the story.)
John Sullivan's life has been overshadowed by the loss of his beloved father when John was only six years old. Frank Sullivan (played by Dennis Quaid) was a heroic firefighter, a great baseball fan, and above all a very loving father. Two nights before the 30th anniversary of his father's death, John (James Caviezel), now a detective, pulls out his father's ham radio and starts a conversation with another ham. What he does not realize at first is that a freak solar phenomenon has provided him a radio channel across almost no distance, but across thirty years. He is speaking to his father sitting at the same desk exactly thirty years earlier. The two discuss the 1969 World Series, not realizing that it was for one an imminent occurrence, for the other a fond but distant memory. When John realizes what is happening and what he can now do, he gives his skeptical father the information that he will need to avoid being killed. But John will quickly figure out what science fiction fans have known all along, that tampering with the past is risky business. In a nifty Rube Goldbergism of time, saving Frank's life has allowed a serial killer to avoid a termination of his criminal career. And for reasons less coincidental than they first appear this particular serial killer is going to strike very near home. John has to try to manipulate the past through his father and then see how the world has changed in thirty years as a result of those changes.
The time warp that allows a series of conversations between father and son is acceptable as a reasonable premise for a science fiction film. For dramatic effect they have added that one is aware of the change if and only if one was involved in bringing it about. This is total bunkum. The physical universe does not care whose idea a change in the past was. Either everybody would remember the change or--much more likely--nobody would. But the first would completely change the plot and the second would rob the film of drama because John could not know of his own victories in changing the past. Towards the end even this rule breaks down and in the final scene John seems to remember the past he has changed out of, but not the new past he has brought about. Everyone else in the world remembers only the new past. The ideas need a little reconsidering. And then once the ideas are straightened out, put them in a movie with a more original plot than stopping a serial killer. To compound the credibility problem John is put onto a case with which he would be expected to be emotionally closely involved. It is an invitation to conflicts of interest and abuse of power. It is highly unlikely the police would allow that.
There is more than a little social comment in the interfacing of 1969 and 1999. In 1969 the elder Sullivan had a storybook, rose-covered-cottage sort of existence. He has the most totally functional family we have seen on the screen for a long time. Two parents and a child love the heck out of each other. The family gives the father strength to go out and risk his life for others with the complete support of his loved ones. Thirty years later John is separated from a woman to whom he never committed. He still lives in his parents' house. His life seems a mess. Of course, losing a father may have contributed to that, but it seems he should be emotionally further advanced.
One final complaint. I am less than thrilled to see the photography of scenes set in my sophomore year in college tinted a sepia tone as if to indicate great antiquity. 1969 was just not that long ago. FREQUENCY is better than most science fiction we see these days. It has ideas and good pacing. I give FREQUENCY a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
