Frequency

Somehow, mysteriously, a father and son are able to speak over a ham radio—although the son (Jim Caviezel) is living in 1999, and his father (Dennis Quaid) has been dead for 30 years. The opening is a simple action scene, but director Gregory Hoblit bungles it; later, when the plot hinges on changing the past and altering the present, Hoblit is utterly incapable of plugging the gaping time-warp holes in Toby Emmerich’s script. Even so, they have stumbled—literally—on a powerful idea: a grown man, haunted by childhood loss, grapples with his past so he can make sense of his present and salvage his future. It’s too potent a metaphor not to work, and as the film lurches from sci-fi to murder mystery to male-bonding flick, the strength of the concept keeps it gripping and satisfying.