Rescue Dawn

Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies

Dir. Werner Herzog
Scr. Werner Herzog

This is a strange film. Not because of its subject matter, but because it didn’t feel quite right. It’s not bad. It was just too funny, I think. And not harrowing enough. But am I just trying to confine a movie to what I except from its genre and not just let it be? Maybe. And if that’s the case, well, I really am ashamed of myself.

Rescue Dawn is the true story of Dieter Dengler, a German-born American fighter pilot who was shot down while bombing Laos during the Vietnam War. Dengler was captured, tortured, and then imprisoned in a POW camp with American and Thai captives. The movie centres mainly on his time in the camp and his subsequent escape and rescue. In this respect, Rescue Dawn is a rather typical example of a POW-movie. But it feels different than most I have seen – there is so much more absurdity, more humour, and although the captives clearly suffer from lack of food, it’s not an “avert your eyes” kind of movie. Does this make it a bad film? Certainly not. This film is compelling and lush and funny. But it’s just, well, odd.

This is director/writer Herzog’s first “American mainstream” film. And while he takes on some well-trodden subject matter, he does so on his own terms. Reminiscent of Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Herzog takes full advantage of the amazing landscape in which this film is set. We are told, via an instructional video for the fighter pilots about to embark on their mission, that the jungle is their friend. This is truly comical – as we see, the jungle is a dense and foreboding death-trap. Beautiful, certainly, but not somewhere you would want to be lost during the dry season. Herzog captures both the beauty and the cruelty of the environment – it is a visual treat.

This film is really about survival and this is best seen in the prison camp that Dengler spends most the film in. The camp is very small – only six prisoners, with even less guards. There is a real intimacy about this camp that you just don’t get in other POW movies. The actors really go the extra mile – Davies is shockingly thin; Zahn is almost unrecognisable; Bale, while not dropping the weight he did in The Machinist, is still a hollowed-out man by the end of the film. I’m in two minds about actors doing this to themselves and just hope that they are monitored by a team of nutritionists. I wonder about the long-term damage Bale has suffered for his art. The scenes in the camp are brilliant – these men, especially Gene and Duane (played by Davies and Zahn), are shadows of their former selves in more ways than just physically. Gene is convinced that rescue is imminent and is a sadly comical character. Duane has nearly lost all hope. Dengler brings a determination to escape to the camp and the group is revitalised – well, as revitalised as six men starving to death can be.

The acting in Rescue Dawn is mostly superb. Bale is good, but I didn’t find him 100% convincing, as I usually do. I think that Dengler’s actual character is part of the problem. It’s amusing that Dengler is German. He has such a gung-ho, America-is-always-right sort of superhero quality about him. And this superhero quality is one of the movie’s flaws – despite everything he goes through, he is never truly vulnerable, never truly compromised; we never quite believe he will die. And surely we must believe this to really cheer for him and care for him. Davies and Zahn are both brilliant in this film. Zahn especially shows he can play well outside his comfort zone of off-the-wall comedies.

The ending was another oddity and really didn’t sit comfortably with me. Such joyousness, such a reception for a returned soldier (fair enough) but again we don’t feel that Dengler has suffered any long-term damage. Which seems completely unrealistic – but perhaps what actually happened. We are told flippantly at the end that Dengler flew again and crashed four more times – as if what we had just watched was merely a plane crash.

So, yeah, there are clearly a few niggles I have about this film. As I said, it’s not a bad film – I was entertained and drawn in; it was well acted and a treat to watch. But it just isn’t right (despite the fact it may be precisely what happened) and I can’t help but want to pigeonhole this film and want it to be something it wasn’t. See it, by all means. You won’t be disappointed. You just may, like me, be slightly bemused.

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Dieter: When something is empty, fill it. When something is full, empty it. When you have an itch, scratch it.