Arrowhead

This movie was a pleasant surprise. At first it seemed a bit slow and boring, but after a while I was dying to know what was happening to the main character. I would recommend this movie to everyone that can appreciate a decent sci-fi movie without getting bothered too much by the plot holes in the science and the poor special effects. The story is actually pretty interesting if you can sit through the boring part. I'm hoping for both a sequel and a prequel that are better funded.

Story: good

Immersion: good

Acting: decent

Special effects: poor

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.

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.

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.)

This movie may be a good first time effort for the director, but it does almost everything wrong. The story can't decide what it's about, the characters are thinly sketched and inconsistent, the effects from tolerable to embarrassing, and the sets and locations looked almost exactly like a 70s Doctor Who or Star Trek effort. There is sometimes a decent atmosphere and some camera work is effective. But it's the muddled story which often makes no sense, that killed it for me. It's not that is was too complex, it's simply that scenes, and even individual dialog lines, didn't connect to each other in any way.

I think possibly if you watched it slightly drunk and with the sound off, it could seem like an amusing diversion, because of some effective images - mostly skies with planets and ships. But trying to follow it like a proper movie just leads to disappointment.