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Frequency
Directed by	Gregory Hoblit
Produced by	Gregory Hoblit Hawk Koch Toby Emmerich Bill Carraro
Written by	Toby Emmerich
Starring	Dennis Quaid James Caviezel Elizabeth Mitchell Andre Braugher Shawn Doyle
Music by	Michael Kamen
Cinematography	Alar Kivilo
Editing by	David Rosenbloom
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	April 28, 2000 June 16, 2000
Running time	118 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$31,000,000
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Frequency is a 2000 film, which contains elements of the time travel, thriller and alternate history film genres. It was directed by Gregory Hoblit and written by Toby Emmerich. The film stars Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel as father and son, Frank and John Sullivan respectively. It was filmed in Toronto and New York City. The film has similarities to the 1985 time travel film, Back to the Future, which shares several plot devices with Frequency.^[1] The film gained average reviews following its release and was released in DVD format on March 1, 2001.^[2]

Contents 1 Production 2 Plot 3 Cast 4 Reception 5 References 6 External links

The film was greenlit for production on January 21, 1999,^[3] although the script had been around much longer. Sylvester Stallone was rumored to be taking the role of Frank Sullivan in 1997,^[4] but fell out of the deal after a dispute over his wage.^[5] His Cliffhanger director, Renny Harlin, was also rumoured to be director on the film.^[4][5] Gregory Hoblit first read the script in November 1997, a year and six months after his own father's death. In a 2000 interview shortly after the American release of Frequency, he described the film as "high risk": the project had already been passed among several directors, including one of note who had twice the budget Hoblit was given.^[6] In the same interview he described the difficulty he had finding the two leads. Hoblit realized he needed an "experienced actor" to portray Frank Sullivan, and thus settled on Dennis Quaid.^[6]

Brian Greene, who served as the physics consultant on the film, appears in a featured television show in both 1969 and 1999.^[7]

The film is set in New York City during October of 1999. John Sullivan (Caviezel), a 36 year old homicide officer, is still traumatized over the death of his fireman father, Frank Sullivan (Quaid), thirty years ago. Living in the same house where he grew up, he discovers his father's ham radio after his girlfriend leaves him — he begins transmitting.

Due to unusual aurora borealis activity, he ends up communicating with Frank 30 years in the past, shortly before the date of the warehouse fire that would kill Frank (and also just prior to the 1969 World Series, which figures prominently in the plot). John is able to warn his father of the fire that would have otherwise taken his life (although he subsequently dies of lung cancer due to smoking).

Nevertheless, having saved his father from the fire, John creates a new timeline, while paradoxically retaining his memory of the old. Previously, John's mother, Julia 'Jules' Sullivan (Elizabeth Mitchell), leaves her job as a nurse at a hospital to attend to Frank's funeral arrangements. In the new timeline, she remains at work and saves the life of a man who is later revealed to be the "Nightingale killer". The "Nightingale killer", in the erased timeline, had killed only three nurses before his death, one of whose body is not discovered until 1999. Now saved, he goes on to kill a total of ten: the sixth will be John's own mother.

Thus, using information from 1999 police files on the killings that did not previously happen, John and Frank must work together across the gap of time to stop the murderer in 1969 and save Julia. Frank is successful in saving the first expected victim, but when he tries to prevent the next, he is attacked by the killer in a nightclub bathroom and his driver's license is taken from his wallet. When he regains consciousness, Frank rushes to the woman's house only to find he is too late. He now becomes a suspect at the scene of the crime and is later taken in for questioning by his police detective friend (and John's later boss), Satch DeLeon (Andre Braugher).

Feeling defeated at first, John realises the Nightingale killer's fingerprints are now on Frank's wallet. John tells his father to hide that wallet in the house where no person will touch it for 30 years. Once Frank does this (hiding it under a loose floorboard under a window seat), it suddenly appears in 1999 in the same spot. John takes the wallet to the crime lab and discovers that the fingerprints belong to a now-retired detective named Jack Shepard (Shawn Doyle). Both John in 1999 and Frank in 1969 confront Shepard at the same time on the same day. Frank thinks he has killed Shepard, but he has only escaped. John knows this must be true because his 1999 family photo shows his mother still absent: she has been murdered.

That night, while the two are talking on the radio, John convinces his father to give up smoking. Shepard then suddenly breaks into the Sullivan household, both in 1969 and 1999. Just as Shepard is strangling John in 1999, Frank gets a gun and blows off the killer's hand in 1969. He flees. In 1999, Shepard's hand disappears; just as he is about to attack John again, the house suddenly changes as if someone else lived there. Out from the shadows comes the living Frank, now an old man, who shoots Shepard, just as he had done 30 years earlier. This Frank neither died in the warehouse fire, nor from lung cancer.

The film ends with a neighborhood baseball game in 1999. Frank and Julia are there, along with John, his wife (the girlfriend who left him in the original timeline) and his son, Frank Junior.

Actor	Role
James Caviezel	John Sullivan
Dennis Quaid	Frank Sullivan
Shawn Doyle	Jack Shepard
Elizabeth Mitchell	Julia 'Jules' Sullivan
Andre Braugher	Satch DeLeon
Noah Emmerich	Gordo Hersch

Frequency received generally good reviews along with several mixed. It has a 71% Approval Rating (Fresh) from Rotten Tomatoes with the general consensus as "a tight blend of surprises and suspense [that] keeps audiences spellbound". Roger Ebert called the film's plot "contrived", yet gave the film a favourable review. He also pointed out similarities with the films The Sixth Sense and Ghost.^[8] David Armstrong, of the San Francisco Chronicle, praised the moments in the film when John and Frank Sullivan talked to each other over the radio but criticised the "unintentionally funny climax". He also praised actor Shawn Doyle's performance as the Nightingale killer, calling him "convincingly creepy".^[9] Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine said despite Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel's physical separation in the film, they formed a "palpable bond that [gave] the picture its tensile strength".^[10] McCarthy noted the screenwriter, Toby Emmerich's, "bold leap into reconfiguring the past" created "agreeable surprises" and an "infinite number of possibilities" to the plot's direction. He added, however, that the serial killer subplot was "desperately familiar".^[10]

James Berardinelli gave the film two stars out of four, criticising the "coincidence-laden climax" but wrote that "poor writing [did] not demand subpar acting", praising Frequency's "few nice performances".^[11] Gary Brown of the Houston Community Newspapers agreed, insisting the "ending prove[d] to be a major let-down".^[1] Frequency made US$68,106,245 worldwide and was released in 2,631 theaters in the United States.^[12] Frequency was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, but ultimately lost out to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film's ending song, "When You Come Back to Me Again", was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.^[13] Written by Jenny Yates and Garth Brooks (performed only by Brooks), the song failed to win, losing out to "Things Have Changed" from Wonder Boys.

• Official Frequency website
• Frequency at the Internet Movie Database
• Frequency at All Movie Guide
• Frequency at Rotten Tomatoes