Frequency (DVD)

If you could change the past, would you? If, in changing the past, you altered the future as well, would you have the courage to work across time to try and fix the future? Those are the questions at the heart of this incredible movie.REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERSJohn Sullivan's life was forever altered when his firefighter father Frank was killed in the line of duty in 1969, when John was only 6 years old. John was raised by his widowed nurse mother, Julia, and made his childhood dream of becoming a cop a reality, working homicide under his dad's best friend Satch.The 36-year-old John (Jim Caviezel) lives in his childhood home, and one night, he and his best friend since childhood Gordo, find Frank's old ham radio. John hooks it up and while fooling around with it, not really expecting anything to come of it, he connects with a faint voice. Initially not knowing who the man is, they talk briefly about baseball. The next night, when that same voice comes across the ham radio even stronger, and asks how John knew exactly what was going to happen in the World Series game that was played that afternoon between the Mets and the Orioles, John tells him it wasn't too tough, since the game happened 30 years ago. A few sentences later, John realizes that somehow, he is talking with father Frank (Dennis Quaid) back in 1969! He tries to prove himself by reminding Frank of Frank's childhood nickname for him (Little Chief) and the song Frank used to sing to him at bedtime every night ("Take Me Out to the Ball Game"), but Frank isn't buying it and thinks some psycho is stalking him and his family. When he threatens to hunt down this phantom voice on the ham radio "until the day I die," John informs him that he already died, in the Buxton fire...which, John soon realizes hasn't happened yet, but WILL happen the next day in 1969!Frank is still angry and refusing to believe he's talking to his son 30 in the future. John frantically tries to get his father to listen to him, managing to get out, "If you would have just gone the other way, you would have made it!" before losing the connection.The next day, Frank's company is called to a four-alarm fire at an abandoned warehouse formerly owned by the Buxton company...which gives him pause when he sees the name on the outside of the burning building. Could that nut on the radio have been on to something?When Frank gets trapped in the flames, he recalls the words from his supposed son--"If you would have just gone the other way, you would have made it!"--and instead of following his instincts, he does indeed go the other way...and does indeed make it out of the building alive, also saving the life of the unconscious runaway teenage girl he went into the building to save in the process.While this is happening in 1969, at the same time in 1999, John is having a drink with Satch and Gordo at a bar. Gordo toasts to Frank: "Here's to your dad. 30 years ago today." Then suddenly, lightning-flash memories begin flitting through John's brain: John growing up, and his dad is there with him and his mom! Camping trips, Little League games, washing Frank's fire-engine red classic Mustang in the driveway, Frank showing young teens John and Gordo his ham radio. John drops his drink, shattering the glass into a million pieces, and announces to the shocked Satch and Gordo that his father didn't die in a fire. They look at him oddly as Gordo reminds John that John's father died of cancer 10 years ago.Father and son reconnect on the ham radio that night, with Frank no longer doubting that "the voice of an angel" that "reached right out of Heaven and pulled my butt out of the fire" is his Little Chief, all grown up. Separated by 30 years, but connected by this ham radio, Frank and the grown-up John talk long into the night. You might want to have tissues handy for this part.John tries to reach his mother Julia (Elizabeth Mitchell) after saying good night to Frank on the ham radio, but gets her answering machine, leaving a message for him to call her. Then he goes to sleep and has a disturbing dream that makes little sense. He is 6 years old again, crying and wearing a black suit and tie, hiding underneath a table covered with a tablecloth and clutching the cross necklace his mother always wears. His mother is nowhere to be found, but their house is filled with people dressed in black and talking quietly and somberly...including a priest. Frank finally finds little Johnny hiding under the table by getting down on the floor, lifting the tablecloth, and seeing his son sitting there in tears, clutching Julia's necklace.Jarred awake by the disturbing dream, John again tries calling his mother...but an irate voice answers the phone, "Noah's Deli." He hangs up and redials a few seconds later, only to get the same irate voice insisting that this is Noah's Deli.John gets dressed and goes into work, where Satch (Andre Braugher) follows him into the men's room and lectures him on respect ("You can disrespect yourself all you want, John, but you will NOT disrespect me!") The excavation of a female skeleton has reopened a cold case that John is assigned to: a missing teenage girl from 1969, who turns out to be the first of ten victims of an uncaught serial killer the police tagged The Nightingale Murderer, because, with the exception of the teenage girl, all of his victims were nurses.When John corrects Satch that there were only three victims, Satch looks at John incredulously and forcefully reminds him that there were ten victims, and John should know that better than anyone...whereupon John attacks the stack of case files on his desk, and while sifting through them, finds a file on his own mother...Julia Sullivan. She was one of The Nightingale Murderer's victims!John reconnects with Frank on the ham radio that night and breaks the news to him. Frank initially thinks that Julia has just died in 1999, but is horrified when John tells him that no, she's going to be murdered by a serial killer in a few days in 1969. Frank just wants to get Julia and little Johnny the hell out of town, but for John, that's not good enough. There are seven other women that weren't supposed to die. John figures out that because Frank didn't die in the Buxton fire, Julia worked her regular shift at the hospital that night, saving the life of a patient who turned out be The Nightingale Murderer in the process. Frank's chief and the family priest went to the hospital to get her when Frank died, so she wasn't there that night, and the guy died after having killed only three people. But because Frank didn't die after John's warning across time and space, Julia was at the hospital to save the guy, and he went on to kill seven more people, including her!Father and son team up across time to work together to save the woman they both love, and the other seven victims as well. John is relieved when he reports to Frank that "Carrie Reynolds [one of the victims] is alive and well today because of you, Dad" (since John had the case files and knew where the killer would be and what he would do when he got there, John gave Frank the locations and descriptions of the women; Carrie Reynolds moonlighted as a waitress in a bar and Frank went to the bar the night she was supposed to have been murdered and just hung around until last call, kept her talking, and made sure she got to her car safely, since she was murdered in the alley behind the bar; he didn't see anyone particularly suspicious, he told John).Things take a turn for the worse, though, when Frank tries to save the second victim, Sissy Clark. She too is moonlighting as a cocktail waitress, but at a different bar than Carrie Reynolds. Frank tries to do for Sissy what he did for Carrie but fails because the killer gets the drop on him in the bar's men's room, knocks him out, and steals his driver's license from his wallet. By the time Frank regains consciousness and gets to Sissy Clark's apartment, she's dead.Although Frank feels terrible about Sissy Clark, John tells his dad, "Dad, we got him! His prints are on your wallet! Take your wallet and hide it someplace in the house...someplace no one will look for 30 years!" Together they decide that Frank will wrap his wallet in plastic wrap and put it in the dining room window seat, under the loose board inside the window seat. Frank and John maintain their ham radio connection while Frank puts the wallet in the window seat, and John retrieves it 30 years later.John has gotten a positive ID on the fingerprints in 1999 and discovered that the killer is a reitred cop named Jack Shepard. He has a tense verbal confrontation with Shepard in a bar. Shepard's mother, a nurse, was murdered years ago. "If they had known your mother was nightingale, they would have looked closer at the family, Jack. They would have looked at you." Shepard asks John what he's looking at. "Stealing your life away," John replies. "You went down 30 years ago, pal. You just don't know it yet."John is relating this to Frank via the ham radio when Satch shows up at the Sullivans' in 1969 with a couple of uniformed officers to take Frank down to the station, because his driver's license was found under Sissy Clark's dead body. Frank physically fights Satch not to be taken from his family, and once he is dragged down to the police station, Satch tells him that unless he can come up with an explanation for how his driver's license ended up under this dead girl, they're going to make him for Sissy Clark's murder. So Frank tells Satch the truth: John, the ham radio, the 30 years' time difference, all of it. Of course Satch doesn't believe it. But Frank, John, and Satch all three were die-hard Mets fans, and this was 1969, the year of the Amazin' Mets' World Series win, and John described every game in detail to Frank even though Frank himself had only seen the first two. The day Frank is hauled down to the police station is the day of the last game of the World Series, the game which featured the world-famous shoe polish pitch: the ball hit batter Cleon Jones on the shoe, getting a smear of polish on it, and Mets manager Gil Hodges insisted, on the basis of the shoe polish on the ball, that Jones be awarded first base because he was hit by the pitch. "You just go and watch the game, and if it don't happen, then I'm a liar!" Frank challenges Satch while also dropping Jack Shepard's name as the real killer and insisting he knows it's true because John told him...on the radio, from the future...that the fingerprints match.Meanwhile, Julia Sullivan has tracked Satch down, demanding answers about why he dragged her husband and his best friend out of their house in front of 6-year-old Johnny and Gordo. But Satch is too distracted by the ball game to give Julia many answers or much comfort...and when he sees the Cleon Jones shoe polish pitch and Jones trotting to first base, he realizes that Frank was telling the truth after all!Frank manages to escape from the police station by setting off the fire alarm (he is a firefighter, after all) while Satch (and most of the rest of the precinct) are watching the game, and he goes after the killer himself. Now knowing Frank is innocent, and willing to check out Shepard, Satch and his partner break into Shepard's apartment after Frank and Shepard have already had a fight there. Satch and his partner follow after them, finally finding them at the river, where it appears that, in a literal fight to the death, Frank has killed Jack Shepard.Frank is allowed to go home to his family, while police divers suit up in scuba gear to search the river for Shepard's body. Frank fixes the ham radio, which got broken when he knocked it off the table when Satch and the uniforms dragged him out of there earlier in the afternoon, and he is able to contact John in 1999 and tell him that it's over.John looks around his house, though, and his eyes fall upon the family pictures: pictures of just him and Frank and their dalmatian dog Elvis. "If Mom's okay, then where is she?" John asks plaintively."But...I killed him," Frank says, puzzled.And it is in that moment that Jack Shepard shows up to the house in both 1969 and 1999, ready to kill every Sullivan he finds in both years! Can Frank in 1969, and John in 1999, finally put an end to Shepard once and for all, without losing either of their lives, or the life of their beloved wife and mother Julia, in the process?If you're a fan of sci-fi, if you like mysteries, or if you enjoy father/son relationship stories, and you haven't seen Frequency yet, you're really missing out on a FABULOUS movie.

In an accidental connection between 1969 and 1999, two lives are saved. One of a son saving his father. The other of a serial killer. How do you solve a murder that has and hasn't happened yet? How do you save the life when you know where they'll be but the details of the crimes keep changing? A surprisingly good story of family love and devotion to doing the right thing.

Good movie . I like Dennis quaid movies.

I love it

♥️

Love this movie, keeps my attention

I have always loved this movie! This DVD came on time and is good quality! Thanks!

My 12 year old daughter saw this a year ago and wanted to watch it again. Great movie.

It's always satisfying to watch a film centering around the subject of time travel that actually works, with plot holes that you can list on one hand only. 'Frequency' delivers in that respect in my opinion.Basically the plot is about a father and son who communicate via a CB radio, the son being in present time and the father existing in the time period of thirty years ago. Of course the son is aware of all the tragedies and events of the intervening thirty years and advises, warns, the father of how to avoid them so that he can enjoy a better life, which will include the son too.The obvious thing to do would be to tell the father about winning lottery numbers or bet on winning horses ( my instant thought ) but the film is never as crass as that and much credit to terrific writing from one of the Emmerich dynasty, Toby, who really created a superb story line that is quite wonderful ---- I am biased as I love the time travel theme .Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel are marvelous as father and son and are larger than life characters in the film that subtly evolve as events unfold as their destinies change. Their on-radio relationship had a chemistry to it which came across to this viewer.There is a strong thriller aspect that really works as a serial killer stalks both their time periods and how that is handled by both men is the nucleus of the plot within the overall time travelling element.Only criticism is the main background music which was insipid and cloying to me ---- I much preferred the 60's songs when they were part of the background.English subtitles and bonus features with this dvd.

This film was much, much better than I expected and I spend a nice moment watching it. The review below contains some limited SPOILERS."Frequency" is a very original and well thought variation on the theme of time travelling - but with a BIG twist. The story begins in New York in 1969, when the main character, John Sullivan, is only 6 years old and it continues in the same place thirty years later, when he is 36. Jim Caviezel (mostly known for his outstanding performance as Jesus in "Passion of Jesus Christ") plays the adult John Sullivan, a somehow depressed and borderline alcoholic police officer, who was just dumped by his girlfriend. Dennis Quaid plays the equally important role of John's father, firefighter Francis Sullivan - and he is EXCELLENT in this role. In 1999 Francis Sullivan is no more around and his son misses him greatly. And then one evening, when tinkering with the old radio he inherited from his father, John Sullivan starts a conversation with another radio amateur operator, who also lives in New York and who sounds oddly familiar...What follows is a very interesting tale of mystery, tragedy and history changing, mixed with elements of thriller. There are parts of this film which really kept me on edge, especially considering that main characters are pretty likeable and I was seriously worrying about both of them, as things were getting more and more dangerous. Also, the ending was pretty surprising and I did not see it comming. There is also a really, REALLY bad guy in this film - and the low key, low drama way in which he is pictured made him actually even scarier...Pay great attention to TV broadcastings which can be seen (or sometimes only heard) discreetly in the background and also to newspaper titles of which the most important appear mostly on the very bottom of the screen...I am not going to say anything more and if you want to see this film try not to read too much about it. The twists and surprises are a particularly important thing in "Frequency".I give to this little known film five stars, because it very pleasantly surprised me, impressed me even in one or two scenes and I spend a really, really good moment watching it. Enjoy!

An atmospheric phenomenon over New York City allows a firefighter to communicate with his son 30 years in the future via a short-wave radio. Once they establish who they are, they have little time for small talk since lives are about to be altered as they seek to influence the past. Not only that, but a serial killer known for what became known as the Nightingale Murders is now back on the scene. What have they done? What can they do? And more importantly now, who will get hurt?I personally have been delighted to find on line reviewers of this film to have been as pleasantly surprised as I was. Many have focused on the fact that they didn't know what to expect, and thus got rewarded for being in the dark as it were. So with that in mind, I'm not about to start delving into the film too much, because if you are a potential first time viewer then you really are better off going in with no expectation level. What can safely be said is that Frequency achieves a rare feat of successfully blending genres and thematics. Sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, thriller, crime and drama all come into play in unknown director Gregory Hoblit's film. Nicely written by Toby Emmerich, the film also benefits from its fine cast of actors. Leading man is Dennis Quaid, who might just be one of the most safest go to guys in his generation, and support comes from a pre-Jesus James Caviezel, Andre Braugher, Shawn Doyle and Elizabeth Mitchell.Frequency is heartily recommended to those who don't need head twisting cinema before they can proclaim a film to be worthy of their time. Yes some things of course defy logic here, this is after all a fantasy led film. But with so many interesting themes going on amongst the cross time molded core, Frequency rises above any charge of being merely popcorn fodder. Smart, warm and exciting, see this one if you can. 7.5/10

This is a poignant sci-fi thriller with great performances from all (especially the two leads) and a story that hooks you from the start and never lets go for the duration of the film. This deserves to be near the top of lists of some of the most intelligent sci-fi films committed to celluloid.Other users have covered the plot line well, so I will just add to what they have already said and mention that you will not regret buying this little-known gem of a film, as it doesn't contain anything too gratuitous and is suitable for people who don't usually watch or enjoy sci-fi films as well as people who enjoy dramas or crime dramas with a twist.It is a rare breed among modern films, it is actually an original piece of film making and so good that it has resulted in my friends buying copies after watching it at mine.

What would you do if you could change the past?What If?What If You Could Reach Back In Time? What If You Could Change The Past?What If It Changed Everything?The Future Is ListeningAn accidental cross-time radio link connects father (Dennis Quaid) and son (Jim Caviezel) across 30 years. The son tries to save his father's life, but then must fix the consequences.This is one of my favorite films of Jim Caviezel i really enjoyed this.Great performances all round, well directed and some cool twists, really cool concept and well developed and some decent action scenes to keep you watching.I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to end and would reccomend it to anyone. Enjoy!