The Arrow

It's a shame that most people in the USA aren't aware of this great film, or this chapter of history, as this TV mini-series produced by the CBC (like most Canadian programming) never made it to our screens. Seeing Dan Aykroyd in this dramatic role shows how good an actor he really is, and that is more than his Saturday Night Live persona.

The DVD is chock-a-block with the 3 hour film, the documentaries 'There Never was an Arrow', 'The Legend of the Arrow', 'The Plane Truth', a Dan Aykroyd interview, photo and magazine gallery, and the pilot training manual!

My advise to other Americans: search for this gem and buy it!

This movie is quite a surprise. It tells a story I had no idea existed. It seems quite amazing it is a true story. It is as dramatic as a fictional story written to be dramatic. I missed the beginning of the movie but based on the description of the DVD I will buy a copy when I get the chance.

For those that don't know the history, the Avro Arrow project was a Canadian interceptor project from the late 1950s. It was cancelled due to excessive cost, and to a perception that interceptor aircraft were obsolete in the wake of Sputnik and the development of ICBMs. Subsequently, the Arrow program has become the basis of a Canadian cottage industry of book publishing and conspiracy theory about why the cancellation occurred, the involvement of the *dastardly Americans*, the downfall of the Canadian aircraft industry, etc.

This program is interesting in many respects -- most particularly the use of CGI to show what a flying Arrow would have looked like, and the use of a near-full scale mock up of an Arrow as set dressing in many scenes. (The Arrow was a *very* large aircraft, and building a mock up was a major proposition). Genuine archive footage of the original Arrow is also used. The set design does a good job of setting the scene for the story.

Where the program falls down is in the story itself. Some posters here have suggested that history needs to be mythologized a bit to make it palatable/interesting. I don't agree with this as a general rule, and certainly not in this case, as the story is every bit as interesting just as it occurred. I understand the need to compress characters and keep a story simple enough to fit in a reasonable duration, but there's no need to generate a whole pile of total fiction to fill out the story. The important issue is that many people who watch this program will think that it's 100% historically accurate -- An impression that the program doesn't try very hard to correct. The story is very heavily fictionalized, and diverges significantly from the established history.

The one good part of all this is that one of the extras on the DVD release of "The Arrow" is the one hour CBC documentary "Dateline -- There Never was an Arrow" from 1980. This is probably the most informative and balanced examination of the Arrow program, and was unavailable for many years. If you want some light entertainment, watch "The Arrow" -- It's not bad, just don't take the story seriously. If you want to know the true history, see the "Dateline" documentary, or the Avro Arrow book by Ron Page et. al. from Boston Mills Press.

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 really enjoyed the movie! Given, I am a sucker for films about aviation, space, and engineering. About an all-Canadian interceptor/fighter built in the late '50's, that was years (if not decades) ahead of its time. The true story shows the development of The Arrow, a plane capable of Mach 2, but also the politics that ultimately doom the project. I am glad that it was not ALL "blame the Americans" as it showed Canadian internal politics, personality conflicts, personal flaws..... and ........ yes....... The Americans (who didn't want the competition in aviation from North of the border).

This ranks right up there with space and aviation films like THE RIGHT STUFF, and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. It is also a great story of concepts ahead of their time getting squashed, like the film TUCKER: A Man and His Dream. A similar story might be (though not yet on film to my knowledge) about Jack Northrop and his flying wing which had a similar development and fate in the US. Of course, Northrop's concept was validated with the B-2...... But, I digress........

Though the budget was low (a Canadian Mini-series, after all), they did the most with what they had. The choice of R/C models for most of the flying scenes was a good choice! It gave the look of the film an organic feel, as opposed to the CG effects, which were so-so. I hope they donated the full-size mock-ups to a museum!

If you love stories about aviation, space, engineering, or cold war history, this is one to find on tape or DVD, or search for on cable! A must see!