n the fall of 1969, firefighter Frank Sullivan (Quaid) risks his life to save strangers. But at the end of the day he returns to his New York home; the arms of his loving, cooking-impaired wife, Julie (Mitchell); and his six-year-old son, John.
That October--the season of the Amazin' Mets's World Series--also sees unusual solar flare activity, blanketing Bayside, Queens, with the spectacle of the aurora borealis. It's also the season of a serial killer named the Nightingale Murderer, who preys on young nurses.
The solar flare affects Frank's ham radio in a strange way. Calling into the night, Frank connects with a man named John Sullivan (Caviezel). It's his son, but 30 years in the future. "Is this some kind of a joke?" asks John, a world-weary cop who still lives in the same house.
It's a shock to John in more ways than one. Unbeknownst to Frank, that October evening in 1969 is his last on Earth. Frank died 30 years ago in a warehouse fire, and John has little memory of him. Just as the ham radio signal winks out, John gives Frank a warning about the fire. The next day, as Frank gets the call, he is mindful of John's warning. And it changes everything. Frank lives.
In 1999, John suddenly has memories of growing up with a father he never knew. That evening, John again talks with his father across the decades. They share their lives in ways John never expected. But more than that has changed. In 1999, suddenly, John's mother is gone. And the never-caught serial killer who once had only three murders to his name now has 10. Julie was one of them, back in 1969.
John radios his father. Because Frank escaped dying, history has morphed in a way that resulted in Julie's death the following week. "Something we did changed the past," John says. The pair join forces across time to try and thwart the murderer and save Julie before she becomes another Nightingale victim.
Past and present just can't connect
Frequency, based on a script by first-time screenwriter Toby Emmerich, takes a new approach to the time travel paradox, keeping its protagonists firmly in their own time periods but allowing them to communicate across the years. Emmerich infuses what is basically a thriller with the emotional resonance of a father-son relationship. And he asks the age-old question of time travel stories: What if you changed something in the past? How would it affect the present?
In this, Frequency combines elements of Timecop, Back to the Future and Contact in new ways. But the film plays flat or sentimental when it's not downright confusing or implausible. For instance, why does John remember his life before the past changed?
The interwoven narratives--1969 and 1999--feel like separate movies, and they don't quite mesh. The 1969 story, which includes the key family moments, feels forced and artificial, more sitcom than real life. The '90s reality, by contrast, feels gloomy and disorienting ŕ la NYPD Blue (a show on which director Hoblit acted as executive producer).
The problem of tone and conflicting styles extends to the storytelling. Frank and John's conversations are warm, leisurely and sentimental, as are the interactions among the supporting players. But the plot is all cold mechanics, MacGyver tricks, unbelievable coincidences, hair's-breadth escapes and convoluted schemes. During the latter part of the movie, the characters are all but lost in the rush of thrills.
Caviezel--last seen as Private Witt in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line--brings his all to John, wringing true feeling out of trite dialogue. Quaid plays Frank as a middle-aged parody of some of his earlier hotshot characters. The excellent André Braugher, best known for his Emmy Award-winning role in TV's Homicide, has little to do but move the plot along.
For his part, Hoblit (Primal Fear, Fallen) seems a little too fond of using hand-held cameras, revolving overhead shots, slow motion, overlapping images and other visual trickery to underscore the idea of a bridge across time (a bridge actually figures prominently in some scenes).
rabian Nights is a four-hour miniseries from Robert Halmi Sr. and Robert Halmi Jr., filmed on location near Goreme in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, in Morocco and at Antalya Studios in Turkey. London's FrameStore created 500 digital effects for the film, while additional computer-generated effects were done by Medialab in Paris. The Jim Henson Creature Shop also added its unique magic to the production.
In the movie, Scheherazade (Avital), the daughter of court official Ja'Far, must marry the sultan (Scott). Because his former queen betrayed him, the sultan trusts no woman. Nevertheless he must marry again or lose his kingdom to his brother. Tormented by nightmares, he vows to have his new sultana executed before dawn.
The women in the harem catch wind of the sultan's intentions and tell Scheherazade. Scheherazade volunteers to marry the sultan, believing that her childhood friend could never kill her. While the people celebrate the wedding and the promise of peace between the sultan and his brother, the court executioner selects the proper silk rope with which to kill the sultana.
Scheherazade makes several attempts to connect with the man she knew as a child. As she often spends time in the marketplace listening to a master storyteller (Alan Bates), she tells the sultan a story, that of Ali Baba (played by Sewell). Each night after that, she tells another elaborate story, including the stories of Aladdin (Lee) and a pair of powerful genies, of a king who trades places with a beggar and finally of a quest for the world's greatest wonder. Of course, Scheherazade hopes the sultan will fall in love with her along the way and spare her life.
Exotic wonders
The original stories of the Arabian Nights came to Europe from French scholar Antoine Galland, who translated them from an Arabic source. As early as the 10th century, there was a Persian collection of a thousand tales. Other collections existed in India and farther east. This production reflects the tales' globetrotting origins, drawing characters from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It also reflects the adult nature of the original stories.
The series' creators give a fresh look to these old, familiar tales. The locations in Arabian Nights are appropriately exotic, and the sets match the natural wonders measure for measure. The visual effects work as shorthand for moods, great distances or rapid passages of time. Of course, they're also necessary for the genies, flying carpets and other wonders.
Writer Peter Barnes enhances the characters of the sultan and Scheherazade beyond their presentation in the original texts. The sultan knows that Scheherazade is tricking him and is appropriately furious, but at the same time he wants to know what happens next in each of her stories. The sultan is clearly lost in a private nightmare from which he desperately wants to escape. Barnes also inserts a few jokes for those paying attention, such as lines from Hamlet in "The Story of the Humpback."
The flaws in this show stem from its adaptation. The most interesting characters are Scheherazade and the sultan, but they make the briefest appearances. In the written collections, the tales take center stage, but in this production they compete with the framing story of Scheherazade and the sultan. Some of the genies' jokes are obtrusive anachronisms. Also, the pacing changes with each of the stories. Overall, though, this miniseries is both glamorous and enjoyable.
