Testa's Takes: 'Rescue Dawn'

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

By Matthew Testa

‘Rescue Dawn’
Written and directed by Werner Herzog.
With Christian Bale (Dieter Dengler), Steve Zahn (Duane) and Jeremy Davies (Gene)
Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense war violence and torture.

In keeping with his long-held fascination with man’s precarious place in wild nature, Werner Herzog applies this theme to thrilling effect in “Rescue Dawn,” an incredible true story of imprisonment, escape and survival in wartime.

While on his first bombing mission before the official start of the Vietnam War, U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, a German-born émigré, is shot down over Laos. After his plane takes fire from the ground and it’s clear Dengler is going to crash, his wingman urges him to bail out. Dengler refuses, choosing instead to stay with his aircraft as it breaks in two and catapults him face down into a watery ditch. Not long after he is captured.

Dengler’s almost suicidal decision to stay with his plane is the first sign of this character’s quirky brand of patriotic zeal. Astutely portrayed by the terrific Christian Bale, Dengler has an almost childlike level of pride in his adoptive country. When he smiles and says “Howdy” to his Laotian torturers, we glimpse a man who is living a foreigner’s idea of what it is to be American, and in doing so becomes more patriotic than many of the Americans around him.

After refusing to sign an anti-American document given him by his captors, Dengler is tortured in a succession of nasty ways, then transported to a prison camp deep in the jungle. There he finds a couple of native Laotians along with two other downed American pilots. Dengler immediately begins plotting escape. Not all his fellow captives are on board, though, and Dengler must not only outwit his captors, he must also manage the difficult personalities of his fellow prisoners.

But Dengler’s fixation on escape is a mania of its own, and Herzog brilliantly keeps the audience wondering whether it might indeed be best for the prisoners to wait for release. A lesser war movie would probably not delve into such ambiguities, but “Rescue Dawn,” like Herzog’s other films, is as much a portrait of potentially self-destructive single-minded obsession as it is about survival.

It’s a subject Herzog knows first hand. As depicted in the documentary “Burden of Dreams,” in which Herzog masochistically ventures deep into the Amazon to make the film “Fitzcarraldo,” this is a director who will stop at nothing to realize his vision. “Rescue Dawn” is more than a re-telling of “Little Dieter.” Much is gained from this dramatization, including hair-raising moments of escape and survival, and a poignant depiction of the bond between fellow soldiers Dengler and Duane (the formidable Steve Zahn).

Despite a clunky start and a strangely Hollywood conclusion that feels glued on, “Rescue Dawn” is mostly imbued with a gripping realism that inserts the audience squarely in the story and resonates long afterward. As in Herzog’s other movies, the jungle here is neither romanticized nor vilified: It just is. Herzog’s nature can provide life – food, shelter and cover. It can also kill. As in “Fitzcarraldo,” “Burden of Dreams,” and “Grizzly Man,” the wilderness to Herzog is horrible and impassive. Only man’s experience in nature gives it context and character. And that makes it utterly perfect.

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Testa's Takes: 'Rescue Dawn' | Planet JH News Article: Movie Reviews

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