This entertaining but uneven movie opens near the sun -- seen blasting a powerful flare into space -- and then shifts to New York's borough of Queens, where the consequences of that celestial event unfold.

The year is 1969. Due to recent solar activity, the aurora borealis is visible as far south as New York. A radio voice intones some headlines -- the World Series is coming up, a nurse has been killed, there's been a truck accident -- and soon we are watching firefighters contend with a dangerous gas line rupture.

Firefighter Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid) demonstrates his bravery during this incident, then goes home to his nurse wife Julia (Elizabeth Mitchell) and six-year-old son John. After pushing the kid a bit too hard to ride without training wheels, Frank gazes up pensively at the cosmic lights. We hear ham radio voices and...

The year is 1999. John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) is now an adult, a cop with a troubled personal life. His girlfriend walks out on him. He drinks, he broods, and he comes across his late father Frank's old ham radio. Meanwhile, the Northern Lights are visible in New York City again. Things are about to get strange.

The Rules of Time Travel

"Time is far more subtle than our everyday experience would lead us to believe. In many ways, time may simply be a psychological construct for organizing the world. It is a device we scientists have found useful, but it may in fact be a dim approximation of something far more complex." --Brian Greene

Frequency justifies its cross-temporal conceit by falling back on parallel universes. According to the film's press materials, John Sullivan never travels in time, but "only communicates to another time dimension," a parallel universe linked to his own in ways that resemble cause and effect.

Astute viewers should not take the bizarre solar activity as a cause of the anomalous radio contact. It may, however, be an unrelated expression of more fundamental forces equally at play in ham radio and sky.

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	Frequency

As John turns on the old radio, physicist Brian Greene (a scientific consultant to this movie, playing himself) speaks on television about the aurora borealis and then, subtly changing the subject, discusses how superstring theory implies there are multiple unseen dimensions of space and -- just possibly -- time.

Such speculation swiftly comes to life. John talks by radio to a man who's waiting for the World Series to begin -- the 1969 World Series. This chance correspondent is, John soon realizes to his astonishment, his own father (who, in an amusing touch, has his own 1960s version of physicist Greene droning away on a black-and-white TV behind him).

Such communication means that John can now advise his father on how to avoid the untimely death that awaits him in a burning warehouse.

But the consequences wrought by this intervention in the timeline are shifting, complex and often disturbing. In particular, a serial killer is on the loose -- one who will continue his nurse-targeting rampage for decades if given a chance.

The past is where we came from

Frequency adeptly evokes Queens across two time periods. The people, buildings and cars look authentic to this reviewer, who grew up there in the 1970s. And some dramatic sequences -- notably, Frank's escape from the warehouse -- shift between the eras with an exhilarating speed and intensity. The special effects, including solar flares and auroras, are competent.

The film's final scenes, however, are marred by a saccharine sensibility and poorly chosen music. And the story is, to put it mildly, rather implausible, though the filmmakers and Professor Greene deserve credit for imbuing it with scientific awareness if not verisimilitude.

Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel both put in capable performances, each displaying a plausible mix of strength and self-doubt. Andre Braugher is excellent as Satch DeLeon, detective and family friend.

The female characters play a surprisingly small role, however, considering their supposed importance to the Sullivan men. Elizabeth Mitchell is largely a bystander as Frank's wife. And it would have been nice to see a little bit more of John's girlfriend, in order to understand why he's so devastated by her absence.