Frequency is the perfect example of a "high concept" movie. This particular high concept creates a series of unusual solar flare-ups that somehow enable 1999 cop Jim Caviezel to communicate, via shortwave radio, with his late fireman father (Dennis Quaid) back in 1969. After he gives Dad some information that winds up saving the old man's life, Caviezel realizes that it has somehow triggered a horrible side-effect, wherein his mother gets murdered by a serial killer! Father and son then team up, over a 30-year gap, to catch the killer and save Mom.
Frequency is the consummate Hollywood movie: an intriguing idea grafted onto a cookie-cutter plot, in this case the old We must identify the murderer and stop him before he kills again! scenario. You can imagine the screenwriter's pitch: "It's like Back to the Future meets Silence of the Lambs!" Ho-hum.
The movie starts off good and ends bad; same old story with most movies these days. But Quaid and Caviezel are fine, New Yawk accents and all, and the first hour is tolerable. Naturally, it devolves into a climactic battle that you could have predicted about 10 seconds into the film's trailer, and the epilogue - complete with a horrendous country-rock beer anthem - is dreadful. I ran out of that theatre as soon as those credits started rolling. Too bad. Frequency had some good potential.