Rescue Dawn (2007)

Excellent

It's been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre's worst banalities.
The film is sometimes an expansion, condensation, and retelling of the same basic tale Herzog told in his classic 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. That film chronicled the life and capture, over Laos, of a German born U.S. Navy Pilot named Dieter Dengler, who spent six months as a prisoner of war in Laos, before escaping with six other men into the jungle. Only Dengler was known to have survived. Rescue Dawn details and condenses many aspects of the earlier film, and is well acted by a stellar cast, well directed by Herzog, and brilliantly cinematographed by Peter Zeitlinger, who melds the stunning visuals of Thailand with Herzog's own classic `eye level realism' to evoke some of the same sorts of jungle imagery that made films like Aguirre: The Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo so impressive. On top of that is the wonderful film scoring by Klaus Bedelt, which is very minimal yet effective when employed; mixing the high and low forms of music Herzog is known for.
The plot is rather simple, and greatly condenses the tale the real Dengler tells within the earlier film.... The acting, especially on Bale's part, is outstanding. In each of his roles, Bale creates characters wildly different from each other. Comic actor Steve Zahn also shines as the timid Duane Martin, and Jeremy Davies makes for an excellent counterpoint to Dengler's exuberance, whether true or not. And the film also benefits by its fast pace. Despite being 125 minutes in length, the film never has `dead air'. It moves relentlessly from scene to scene, often being cut just before a typical Hollywood moment would arise in an action film. Thus, Herzog gives the viewer their Hollywood steak while not clogging their arteries with the mindless fat.
Yet, despite all its excellent points, at its heart, this film, unlike the documentary version of Dengler's life, is simply a deeper action film (a sort of leaner, meaner The Bridge On The River Kwai); it lacks the overall intellectual depth, probing, and agon that defines great art and suffuses Herzog's fictive classics from earlier in his career, even as it is a significantly better work of art than such a similarly themed and lauded film as The Deer Hunter. Rescue Dawn, however, and despite its near miss at greatness, is certainly a must see for those people who want to get a richer perspective on the Vietnam War, and deserves its place alongside Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket as unique visions of that war. But, to get an even fuller sense of what the war and Dieter Dengler were all about, watch Little Dieter Needs To Fly right afterwards. It's called eating the cake whilst having it, too; but, more than that, one will find that the cake is also surprisingly healthy and enlivening. Keep cooking, Werner!
September 17, 2008

Just Missed 5 Stars

This is a great movie. The story is amazing, the movie is very realistic and it puts you right in place. The only problem I had with the movie which made it miss 5-stars was that the directing is a little different. Not bad, but different. Didn't really care for the directing... September 15, 2008

Great

i was very happy with the product and the quick, fast shipping, I will use this seller again and again. September 4, 2008

I never received my item!

I have never received the video Rescue Dawn that I ordered. It has been almost two months. I am not very happy with my service!
Margaret Chappell September 1, 2008

A story of courage

Inspired by the true story of Dieter Dengler's (Christian Bale) ordeals during the Vietnam war, Rescue Dawn follows Lt. Dengler on his very first combat mission. Prior to the primary ground battles, U.S. troops flew bombing raids missions into Laos, and it is during one such excursion in 1965 that Dengler's plane took ground-fire that caused a crash.

While jungle survival videos produced by the military were supposed to keep a downed pilot safe in Dengler's situation, they did no such thing. Woefully unprepared for the jungle, he's captured in a matter of days and soon faces months of sadistic torture at the hands of both the Laotians and the Vietnamese. Beatings, being bound and tied to a moving oxen, and nearly drowned, he's eventually moved to a P.O.W. camp where other soldiers are being held. It is in this prison camp that a daring rescue attempt is devised by the shared contributions of the prisoners, as Dengler and other prisoners fight through the jungles of Laos towards Thailand and eventual freedom.

Convincing as Dengler, Christian Bale really sells out for this role. Throughout the movie his physical condition noticeably worsens, his weight takes a dramatic drop, and he truly looks like he may have been tortured as a POW.

Troubling, however, is what I have read since watching the movie. Evidently, several other prisoners and their families take umbrage with the manner in which the movie portrays certain events. Werner Herzog takes liberties with certain facts, giving credit to Dengler when others were responsible, and painting other prisoners in a negative light when, in fact, they were courageous and patriotic throughout the entire ordeal.

Not knowing the contested history, this movie is a solid contribution to Hollywood's Vietnam oeuvre. It's a tense, harrowing drama, and I'm upset that this is based in even the remotest sense on reality. Knowing that certain portrayals within the movie inaccurately tarnish the legacy of good men who gave their lives upsets me even more.
August 4, 2008

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