Arrowhead

I was expecting another low-budget Sci-Fi shambles, but this is an entertaining movie with good quality production and acting. There is a lot of stuff going on in the plot to keep the viewer's attention, though most if not all the ideas are taken from other movies, and I'm not sure if the story that comes together here makes 100% sense. The basic motivations, conflicts, and relationships of the characters are rather incompletely developed so it is hard to invest much emotionally, but over-simplifying characterization to squeeze it into a movie's time constraints often just elicits the audience's contempt. Not a ingenious masterpiece, but a decent movie that rehashes some neat ideas.

The synopsis here is that Kye Cortland (Dan Mor) is escaped from a planetary prison by some guerrilla types who are the enemy of the Empire and sent on a mission on a ship called 'Arrowhead' as he has the technical skills to fly it. The mission goes a tad wrong and he gets shipwrecked on a deserted moon.

There is a tradition that certain prisoners are executed on a particular day each year and Kye finds out his father is next. All he wants to do is get to him before that happens and these outlaws are his only chance. The problem is he is not alone on this moon and what he meets will change him forever.

Now this is low budget but that made me like it even more. They have gone back to basics and used bits of old vacuum cleaners and typewriters to make some of the props – even dustbin lids are employed. The acting is all excellent. Dan Mor is particularly good, but I have to say hats off to Christopher Kirby who starred in the brilliant 'Iron Sky'. He only has a small role but absolutely nails it and then some. The on board computer is brilliant too and will remind certain people of 'Dark Star' or even 'Red Dwarf'. The story itself is refreshingly original and it manages to keep the tension going right the way to the final frame. The CGI varies from rather good to above average but I am more than happy to live with that when the over all package is actually engagingly good.

This is a sincere effort, not a piece of schlock (which is how it earned its fourth star from me), and does quite well with its budget, and the acting is reasonable (I especially liked Shaun Micallef's voice work as the shuttle's AI system, RE3F (pronounced "reef")). The problem is that while the film throws a fair number of potentially interesting ideas at the wall, it thinks that more of them stick than actually do, and if the exact rules of how one of the big ones worked were ever made clear it went right by me.

(It's also frustratingly slow-moving at times. At 95 minutes in length, it could have been easily done at 70 to 75.)

It's a low budget film and much is what you would expect. Cliches and bad to decent writing. There isn't a ton of dialogue though so it isn't a big sore spot. Acting is okay to good. Effects are okay except the monster scenes.

Where the movie shines is the world it creates. It's a convoluted and messy story but enjoyable by the end. After the film I had to look up if this was an original story. It seemed like the setup for a comic book or something. Couldn't find anything so I was impressed.

I would say that when it comes to judging good science fiction movies I have a good sense of sniffing out the good from the bad, normally I can tell within just few minutes if the movie holds any promise, but this movie is somewhat very strange… it starts of very weak even through a big chunk of the budget was spent in the first 20minutes of the movie, I found myself compelled to continue watching even when it didn't hold much appeal! I'm glad I waited, the story picked up and the acting is 10x better in the second half of the movie than it was at the start, its rare to see a movie that goes from so bad to so good, and I have to take my hat off to the entire crew for pulling of a superb low-budget sci-fi.