The abundance of time-travel movies can be overwhelming – it's a genre milked for everything it's got time and time again, often with ho-hum results. However, from all reports, there's no ho-hum in "Frequency," the genre's newest entry.
John Sullivan (James Caviezel) is a New York cop living in Queens in 1999. One night, during an aurora borealis light storm, he begins fooling with his late father's ham radio. His heroic firefighter father died fighting a 1969 fire, a fact that left his son angry and lonely — and always wishing he could have changed that fateful day in 1969.
As he tinkers with the radio, he strikes up a conversation with a man who claims to be a firefighter and who is awaiting the 1969 World Series. (And who wouldn't be? Remember the "Amazing Mets"?) So, guess who the man is.
Anyhow, John and his newfound father, Frank (Dennis Quaid), talk all night in a conversation spanning 30 years. This is, after all, a fantasy. (The Mets, in fact, did win the Series that year, which, although it seemed so, wasn't a fantasy.) So John achieves his life's dream and prevents his father from dying in that fire. But not without a price. John and Frank discover a serial killer in their midst and must race against the clock to get him separated by three decades and connected only by a radio.
The film has moments of comic relief, including kids and a Dalmatian pup for good measure. Andre Braugher and Elizabeth Mitchell get honorable mention in supporting roles. Quaid is said to be "strong and charming in his portrayal of the father," and, according to one reviewer, "Caviezel is even better as the complicated, moody son."
The movie was directed by Gregory Hoblit and produced by Hoblit and Howard "Hawk" Koch. It is rated PG-13 for intense violence and disturbing images. It's playing at Market Square East on St. Thomas and at Sunny Isle Theaters on St. Croix.