recommended

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Almost nothing about this story agrees with the facts.The most pertinent of those are public knowledge and the cabinet minutes are posted athttp://www.international.gc.ca/ department/history-histoire/dcer/ details-en.asp?intRefid=8169Diefenbaker's government was told the cost of the aircraft would be nearly $10 million each,"The R.C.A.F. now had nine all-weather squadrons and the present programme called for their re-equipment with the CF-105, requiring a production order of 169 in number. These, together with aircraft recovered from the development and pre-production order for 37, would provide sufficient aircraft for nine squadrons. The total cost would be $2 billion spread from 1959-60 to 1963-64." (This compared to $2 million for a Voodoo or $3.75 million for a Delta Dart.) The military recommended cancelling the program,"Finally, the cost of the CF-105 programme as a whole was now of such a magnitude that the Chiefs of Staff felt that, to meet the modest requirement of manned aircraft presently considered advisable, it would be more economical to procure a fully developed interceptor of comparable performance in the U.S." Note that the government was told the Arrow was "comparable" to other aircraft and not that it could fly higher, faster, or further than anything else.The film is a little piece of political propaganda and deserves a negative score for being less than useless but the choices are limited to positive values. It actually deserves something closer to -7 out of 10.

In 1959 Canada cancelled the production of the Arrow. It was an Airplane 20 years ahead of it's time. The 7 flyable Arrows were cut up for scrap. Dan Ackroyd does a terrific job portraying the man behind the design and construction of the "plane that never was". The movie tracks the team that designed the Arrow and delves into the many personalities from designers to production workers who worked on this project. The movie also gives historical film clips of the actual test flights of the aircraft as it was being tested. These in themselves are worth the price of the movie. Everyone should see this movie, not only for the quality production but also for it's historical significance. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** 7/10. I loved The Arrow, but I have to admit its shortcomings. This film has a lot of faults, but the film producers, like the plane manufacturer itself, had an uphill battle just trying to get this four-hour mini-series made. It looks like Dan Ackroyd is ideal for playing Avro president Crawford Gordon, and I understand that Ackroyd as a child actually met Gordon. The rest of the cast play sympathetic characters well, although I don't know how true to life they are. However, Robert Haley and Michael Moriarty do bad impressions of John Diefenbaker and Dwight Eisenhower, which is a shame given Dief's real-life colour. The political bias shown against the Conservative Party and for the Liberal Party is a little shocking. Much dramatic license is taken with the actual story. *** Spoilers Follow *** Computerized piloting was not really included in the final prototype planes. The real design called for the planes to be fitted with nuclear missiles, but that detail is conveniently omitted from the story. There were actually no key leaders at Avro who were female, so the charming Sara Botsford is inserted for gender balance and romantic interest as a key, single-mother engineer. However, I found out about these dramatizations because the show impressed me so much that I read the non-fiction book that it was based on. Therefore, I have to admit that the show works for me. If you like invention stories, then you should like The Arrow. If you are a Canadian who has some patriotism, then know that this is one of those rare specimens that appeal to Canadian patriotism. After the catastrophic way in which the Arrow project ended, I found nothing so poignant and bittersweet as the long list shown before the closing credits of Avro talent that left Canada to help lead the development of Apollo, Concorde, and the Space Shuttle.

too many artistic liberties were taken with the real history of the arrow in order to make it more palatable for tv audiences, which resulted in what should have been a fine movie being nothing more than tv garbage