Reviews

Notre Dame school was famous for 'turning around' boys that were borderline delinquent, many of whom went on to become business leaders and professionals. They were also famous for their tough hockey team, the hounds. This film gives a strikingly real portrait of post-depression Saskatchewan from the 1940s, and shows the loving kindness and the tough stubbornness of Athol "Pere" Murray, who founded the school and gave it the reputation that it enjoys to this day. Pere Murray, who in his earlier days founded the famous tribute to the early Jesuit missionaries at Ste. Marie Aux Hurons in Ontario, a major tourist attraction with reconstructed fort and museum, was considered crazy for wanting to build a boys school in the middle of nowhere in the dust bowl. This movie shows the mix of vision and zeal that made Notre Dame a success, now funded in good part by many of its successful graduates. For those who wonder - yes, Saskatchewan blizzards are exactly as portrayed in the film.

Wonderful mindless fun entertainment. Goofy plot, passable acting, clumsy dialog, but it is the kind of movie that doesn't ask much of the viewer, and viewers shouldn't ask much of it except for a bit of fun. I had fun. There is a wonderful bad guy, there are beautiful women like in the James Bond films, and there is a rather hapless quasi-Bond type who gets caught up in the intrigue. This is a film in the 1960s spoof genre, with its chase scenes, cars, planes, helicopters, parachutes, kites, boats, and on and on. It pokes fun at the James Bond type of movie, while at the same time having a bit of its own espionage action, just enough that the film could stand on its own (shakily) as a spy/seduction movie. This is worth renting if you can get it. It is too bad they don't make more of this fun entertainment these days.