Frequency (Movie)

Frequency is a 2000 science fiction film. It starred Jim Caviezel (prior to his appearance in The Passion of the Christ) and Dennis Quaid, among notable stars.

The film delves into time travel and the "butterfly effect".

Plot[edit]

The film is set in a time-traveling sequence between 1969 and 1999. John Sullivan (Caviezel), an NYPD detective is speaking on his father's old ham radio in 1999, when due to unusual aurora borealis activity, he manages to contact his father Frank (Quaid) at the same in 1969. It is the anniversary of the night before Frank's tragic death as a FDNY firefighter; John manages to warn Frank of his pending death and Frank avoids it. Later the two continue conversing, primarily about the ongoing 1969 World Series (featuring the New York Mets); the Series would play a huge part in the movie.

But the altered history comes with a price: John's mother Julia (a nurse), who was alive in 1999, is now dead. In the original timeline, after Frank's death she attends his funeral and is not present at the hospital when Jack Shepard (a former detective) dies of a medical error, but when the timeline changes, Julia is able to save Shepard's life. However, Shepard was secretly a serial killer known as "Nightingale" (as he would kill nurses): he would kill three nurses before his death (pre-timeline change) but ten afterwards (including Julia) and was never caught. The timeline also alters Frank's death, instead of dying in the fire he would die in 1989 due to smoking.

John is assigned by his boss, Satch (an old friend of Frank's) to work on the Nightingale cases and convinces Frank to help stop the murders. Frank stops the first, but in trying to stop the second Shepard subdues him, steals his wallet and plants it on the victim to successfully frame Frank (in the arrest, the radio is damaged). Frank attempts to convince Satch that he is speaking to John in the future, by telling him how the 1969 World Series would play out (notably, the Game 5 "shoe polish incident"), escapes while being questioned, and breaks into Shepard's apartment, ending in a fight where he appears to have killed Shepard (Satch arrives and realizes Frank wasn't guilty).

Frank fixes the radio, but while in another conversation with John he is attacked by Shepard in 1969 while John is being attacked by Shepard in 1999. Using a shotgun Frank blows off Shepard's hand in 1969 (which disappears in 1999 just as Shepard is about to kill John). Frank then appears in 1999 (he stops smoking which avoids his 1989 death) and kills Shepard once and for all.

A subplot in the movie has John's buddy Gordo listening to advice and, as a result, invests in Yahoo! stock before it becomes popular, making him rich.