Rescue Dawn

Director Werner Herzog has always been an exciting filmmaker, telling stories both real and fictional with great passion and commitment. With Rescue Dawn he mixes his two worlds together, adapting his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly into a narrative film. Herzog makes the leap from fact based doc to "inspired by" cinema with enviable aplomb, delivering a feature with the expanse of fictional works but the clear cut veracity of documentary precision. The story here is inspired by the real life Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, (portrayed by the phenomenal Christian Bale) who was part of a secret mission to bomb Laos in the early stages of American conflict with Vietnam. It was his very first mission and very quickly into it, Dengler crashed his plane and was taken captive. He then meets up with additional American prisoners including Dwayne (Steve Zahn) and Gene (Jeremy Davies) who've already had there spirits beaten down by more than two years of grueling torment in the prison camp. The good-natured Dengler refuses to lose hope and instead begins plotting an escape that seems to his fellow captors to be highly improbable at best.

Herzog's great gift for capturing reality on film makes this very laboriously detailed account of Dengler's time as a prisoner and eventual attempt at escape feel all the more intensely urgent and uncompromised. It comes with a level of brutal honesty that typical Hollywood depictions of war often lack. Herzog is deeply dedicated to delivering the story in all its splendor and complexity. He directs the film with a visual delicacy that suggests authentic footage without the overuse of handheld grit. It's not at all about shaky frames, but instead about simply capturing the events with no concern for the unfortunateness of the material he may be presenting. The camera has no pretense and passes no judgements. We see the best and worst of Dieter's journey in as vivid a way as possible. There are strikingly beautiful images here and yet there are also some of devastating horror. Herzog also emphasizes all the layers to the conflict and characters. It's one of the most flawless and complete executions of a narrative that I have seen all year.

Much of the awesomeness stems from the fact that Herzog seems to have found a kindred spirit of unhealthy commitment in Christian Bale. Herzog's reputation as a wildly creative and daring filmmaker, willing to put himself in predicaments of his own to capture the right footage is matched by Bales' willingness to take on all kinds of physical harm for his roles. He's not just one of the outright best actors of his generation, but he's also the most noticeably willing to transform himself for each part. He very famously starved himself for a role in the cult hit The Machinist and here he allows himself to be submitted to many of the same tortures as Dengler was those years ago. He's dragged by a bull through town, dunked underwater and held beneath the surface, and eventually finds himself deteriorating physically while on a pitiful prison camp diet that includes sequences of Bale proudly shoveling worms into his mouth. It's a performance of striking emotional truth and a baffling level of self-destruction. Bale continues to secure his place as an incomparable screen presence with a performance that ranges from "aw shucks" sweetness to violent rage. He makes Dengler kind and cheerful even in the face of death, lending new depths to a personality that should realistically break under pressure. He's the most affable of the prisoners but he's also perhaps the most dangerous because beneath his charm there's a ruthless and skilled soldier with unstoppable determination.

Rescue Dawn is more of a cinematic experience than a mere feature film. It's an exercise in specificity and taking the long way around. It doesn't reinvent Dengler's story or take cinematic short cuts. It truly gives you the feeling of living with these men in this prison. It's a difficult film to get through at times, but it's a very rewarding and brilliant feature to endure. There's such an intimate connection formed with these characters that there's nothing to hope more for than their safe return home.

Grade: A