The Arrow (1997)

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is a laudable attempt to portray the destruction of the Canadian aerospace industry by a scheming President Eisenhower and a clueless Prime Minister Diefenbaker. Unfortunately, that part isn't at all true. The Arrow was killed by cost overruns and the near-impossibility of developing a new plane, a new engine and a new radar system all at the same time. The geeky engineer character kind of annoyed me, too. The writers had him inventing about three things that were utterly crucial engineering and aerodynamics breakthroughs all by himself. Sorry, nobody's that good, not even the people who did that work in the first place. A lot of the people in the film are historical characters, some are composites. All in all, I really enjoyed this film, but the aviation geek in me gets irritated by factual errors.

I love anything Dan Ackroyd does so I watched it for his part. I was to be surprised by a really good plot and real people. Then you find out that this is indeed a true story! The movie follows the history of a Canadian Aircraft Company and it's president. The story concerns itself about an experimental plane that the Government wants for a fighter/bomber. The incredible team of workers instead create a plane capable of things that they can not even test at their facilities. This plane is many years ahead of the world! Then politics get into the picture and well you will need to watch it and see what happens. Watch it you'll love it also. It will also make you very angry in parts. I bought two copies just to loan out. Two thumbs up. Alan

The Arrow is a compelling story of inventive and persistent people who strive to make an "impossible" airplane. Overcoming setback after setback, a team of Canadian engineers, managers and workers create one of the fastest and most capable fighter-interceptors in the world. This somewhat fictionalized miniseries effectively pulls the viewer into their struggles, much as "From The Earth To The Moon" created a feeling for the efforts behind the U.S. Apollo program. Indeed, the parallels between the American Apollo program and the Canadian Arrow program are subtly drawn several times in the film (many of the engineers who worked on the Arrow went stateside to work on the Saturn V and the Lunar Module). About halfway through the 3-hour film, it becomes apparent that the true challenges to the Arrow project are not engineering or practical problems, but political realities. Unlike the journey to the moon, the goal of building the world's greatest airplane cannot survive the conflicts of personalities, vagaries of public opinion, and budget overruns that plague any huge engineering project.The film effectively depicts the drama of the project. However, even if one overlooks the factual discrepancies, the film suffers from a few flaws: 1) The film is a bit slow in some places, and certainly feels as if it were padded to fill the time for a two-part miniseries. If it had been paced differently, or edited down by 30 minutes or so, it certainly would have flowed better. 2) While most of the characters are based on real people, and indeed seem fleshed-out rather well, the film also includes a composite character, representing all the female workers on the Arrow project. This character seems artificial and out of place; much like the Charlton Heston character in the movie Midway, she seems to be everywhere doing everything, and thus comes across as a caricature. This is not helped by the performance of Sara Botsford, who seems to be playing the role as if she is thinking, "my character is 50% of the population, dammit." 3) Some of the other casting seems odd. For example, Michael Moriarty is a fine actor, but he is singularly unconvincing as Ike.Despite its flaws, this is an entertaining and inspiring film if you enjoy stories of people who strive to achieve.

Very good acting. But I do have a criticism.We are told in the credits that Kate O'Hara (Sarah Botsford) is a compound character created to represent all the women involved in the Arrow program. OK, so explain to me why she's inserted into the very top echelons of the company and the Canadian Government? C'mon.We are often only permitted to witness crucial scenes at a distance because the director feels it more important to feature Kate's face in the foreground.It sure looks like some ardent feminist with clout in the CBC lock-stepped director Don McBrearty into twisting a great movie.