RESCUE DAWN

Directed by Werner Herzog
Written By Werner Herzog
Stars: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn & Jeremy Davies
Duration: 134 Minutes

After his acclaimed 2005 documentary The Grizzly Man, German auteur Werner Herzog turns once more to feature filmmaking, crafting a decidedly tense tale that is a feature adaptation of his own 1997 documentary: Little Dieter needs to fly. It’s the story of Dieter Dengler (Bale), a German–born US Navy pilot who, while on a bombing raid over Laos during the Vietnam War in 1966, is shot down and captured by the Viet Cong. After enduring a variety of punishments, he’s tossed into a Laotian P.O.W camp where he finds a small group of emaciated prisoners who’ve languished there for years. After a time, Dieter befriends the gentle Duane (Zahn) and manages to foster some goodwill with the paranoid Gene (Davies) who feels Dengler’s talk of escape is a threat to the calm they’ve maintained with the shirtless, machine-gun toting guards who seem a hairs breadth away from attacking the prisoners. Remaining dogged to a fault, the survival instinct takes hold in Dengler and he sets about preparing for his escape and his journey through the jungle to freedom.
This well has been drawn from many times by lesser filmmakers but Herzog’s eye for realism and un-formulaic pacing keeps the proceedings taut. The sure handed direction elicits intense performances from the cast; Davies is the embodiment of twitching paranoia and unpredictability as Gene and Zahn, usually cast as the goofy sidekick, is revelatory as the despondent Duane. However it’s the laser-focused intensity of Bale that wholly elevates the film, his skeletal body and palpable desperation serves to create an utterly compelling protagonist for this emotionally wrenching story of the ‘crazy-brave’.