Rescue Dawn

Werner Herzog’s latest is another trial by ordeal, and a further chapter in his ongoing muddying of the borders between documentary and feature filmmaking. ‘Rescue Dawn’ is a pretty straight dramatic account of the real-life story of Dieter Dengler, a German-born US Navy pilot who was shot down over Laos in 1966. Herzog has already told the story of the truly hellish three weeks that followed, in the 1997 doc ‘Little Dieter Needs to Fly’; here Christian Bale does justice to the palpable life-force that Dengler showed in that film. It’s one of Herzog’s smaller features, but visceral, transporting and laced with quiet ironies.