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Rescue Dawn (2006)

Director: Werner Herzog

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4 reviews

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From Time Out London

Hubris, the jungle, monomania, aviation, a flirtatious relationship between reality and fiction – ‘Rescue Dawn’ could only be a Werner Herzog project. The film is in fact a feature version of ‘Little Dieter Needs to Fly’, Herzog’s 1997 documentary about Dieter Dengler, a German-born US Navy pilot shot down in 1966 over the Laos jungle, and the truly nightmarish three-week ordeal that followed. Captured, diseased, deranged, Dengler still displayed the single-minded self-belief that has always fascinated Herzog; participating with gusto in the director’s recreation of his travails in their original location, he was a dream subject.

Aside from reaching a larger audience than ‘Little Dieter…’, it isn’t particularly clear what the story gains in the translation to straight narrative. Christian Bale, who hasn’t looked this peaky since ‘The Machinist’, does an excellent job of bearing the intolerable burden, but Dengler himself made for an equally magnetic and more complex presence in a documentary whose format allowed for play with memory and identity of a kind not possible here. Still, as an exercise in tension and identification, ‘Rescue Dawn’ is terrific. On screen throughout, Bale’s Dengler is heroically determined, but kept at a slight remove by a survival instinct bordering, perhaps necessarily, on the pathological. (Steve Zahn, as a fellow PoW, provides a more understandably fragile counterpoint.) The camera stays tight and neutral, sympathetic but not privileging Dengler over his environment. Always sceptical about the human project, the filmmaker laces his picture with quiet ironies, such as the early training film coaching pilots how to dominate the jungle. That, in Herzog’s world, is asking for trouble.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 1944: November 20-26 2007

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User reviews of this film

dd said...

Posted on Dec 12 2007 15:42 Great film

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critique said...

Posted on Nov 29 2007 13:31 Interesting what John Badger has to say about the walk-outs. I saw film at a matinee screening along with 3 other couples, 2 of whom walked out. The film does drag somewhat during the middle section but overall I found it absorbing, believable and, oddly, quite humourous. Hated the ending, though, which seemed as though it belonged to another movie.

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John Badger said...

Posted on Nov 26 2007 12:31 This was a really disappointing film. Whilst the Cinemaphoyography in the opening flying scenes were very well executed the story deteriorated to a finale of boys own behaviour and US flag waving. The Deer Hunter is a classic of this genre and is still leaps and bounds ahead of this trite interpretation of a real life drama. The showing at the Odeon Wimbledon had approximately 30 people and more than one walked out half way through the film.

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Carl Barton said...

Posted on Nov 19 2007 18:09 This is outstanding, ok the crash landing is not entirely convincing, but from then on the film grips you and doesn't let go. Christian Bale leads an exceptional cast in what is a quietly brilliant movie.

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