The Arrow (TV 1997)

The true story of how Canada built and destroyed the world's most advanced fighter plane back in the 1950s.

Director:

Don McBrearty

Writer:

Keith Ross Leckie

Stars:

Dan Aykroyd, Sara Botsford, Ron White

9 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dan Aykroyd	...	Crawford Gordon
Sara Botsford	...	Kate O'Hara
Ron White	...	Jack Woodman
Aidan Devine	...	Jim Chamberlin
Nigel Bennett	...	James (Jim) Floyd
Jonathan Whittaker	...	Fred Smye
Ian D. Clark	...	Edward Critchley
David Brown	...	Joe Paloffski (as Dave Brown)
Catherine Fitch	...	Ruby Paloffski
Robin Gammell	...	C.D. Howe
Robert Haley	...	John George Diefenbaker
Michael Moriarty	...	President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Michael Ironside	...	CIA Director
Christopher Plummer	...	George Hees
Mauralea Austin	...	June Callwood

Storyline

This series tells the story of the world's fastest fighter plane ever built, in 1950's Canada, and how the project was dropped due to political pressure from the United States.

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Plot Keywords:

canada | cold war | sound barrier | aviation | sputnik | 

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Taglines:

The right stuff. The wrong time.

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Genres:

Drama | History

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Details

Country:

Canada

Language:

French English

Release Date:

12 January 1997 (Canada)

Also Known As:

Gyorsan, mint a nyíl

Filming Locations:

Gimli, Manitoba, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$7,800,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Film Works, The, John Aaron Productions, Manitoba Film & Sound Development Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

180 min

Color:

Black and White Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The Arrow was originally pitched as a major movie to Hollywood, but no American studio would touch the project, thus it being re-invented as a big budget TV movie.

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Goofs

In the movie the engines were silent when the sound barrier was broken. When one breaks the sound barrier, the engines do not all of a sudden become quiet. The sound can be heard through the aircraft itself.

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Connections

Featured in The Legend of the Arrow (1997)

User Reviews

Flawed, but basically good

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.