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.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
DVD of the Week: 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.
