Rescue Dawn (2007)

Directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Galen Yuen, Aphijati Jusakul, Chaiyan “Lek” Chunsuttiwat, Chorn Solyda, François Chau, Toby Huss, Pat Healy, Zach Grenier. [PG-13]

The subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary film Little Dieter Needs to Fly is given a narrative movie treatment (by no less than Herzog himself), with Christian Bale slipping on Dieter Dengler’s goggles as a Naval pilot shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. His grueling struggle to stay alive and escape is captured in a realistic and unsentimental fashion, while Dengler is painted with a touch of the obsessiveness and lunacy that Herzog sees in almost all his appreciatively foolish heroes, from the Spaniard Aguirre to the “Grizzly Man”. Filmed in the wet, lush jungles of Thailand, it might be the director’s most conventional picture (for better or worse), and although his direction of key incidents of harrowing action and tragedy can sometimes be confused (Dengler’s plane crash, the brutal murder of one of his fellow escapees, etc.), there’s no distracting sense of Hollywood-ized fine-tuning or dramatic license. Versatile Bale does his reliable (and reliably effective) “disappearing act”, fellow P.O.W. Steve Zahn tones down his neurotic excitability, and other fellow P.O.W. Jeremy Davies loads up on the showy, squirmy vocal tics he’s known for. As a whole, overlong, but absorbing more often than not, and almost always visually articulate. Photography by Herzog-regular, Peter Zeitlinger, who also shot the Little Dieter doc.

70/100