Rescue Dawn (2007)

Visually arresting, but a forgettable film.

This movie was specifically requested by my brother as the film upon which we would build our Blu-Ray collection. We watched it the first night we had gotten our Playstation 3 and HDMI cable. That was also the last time we watched it.

Visually, we couldn't have picked a better movie to inaugurate ourselves into the world of Hi-Def films. Herzog's cinematography is exceptional. The colors and details are so arresting and intense that, honestly, it is almost overwhelming for a moment. Unfortunately, the sightseeing doesn't get to last very long, as once Christian Bale's Deiter Dengler gets captured, the tone shifts visually to the muddy prison camp for much of the rest of the film.

I wish I had more to say about this movie, but unfortunately there's not much more to say: Christian Bale's performance is engaging, but on par with what we'd expect from him. The real star performance comes from Steve Zahn, who finally reveals that he can act. He performs well beyond what one would expect from the guy that starred opposite Jack Black in Saving Silverman, and if I had to pick one real reason for seeing this movie, it would be his performace. Ultimately, though, the plot drags through most of the second act, and while it's not a bad film by any stretch of the term, it's just not a movie I've had a strong desire to watch again.

I would say that fans of Christian Bale should get this movie, but if you are a big Bale fan, you probably already have it. October 30, 2008

Not that good

My wife and I watched this movie but it wasn't that good at all. The seller sent it to us very fast, but after watching the movie I wouldn't watch it again. October 28, 2008

Harrowing tale of survival

Flying a bombing mission over Laos in 1965, Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) is shot down, tortured, and imprisoned in a POW camp. Refusing to give up hope, he leads the other, dispirited captives (Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Abhijati "Meuk" Jusakul, and Lek Chaiyan Chunsuttiwat) in an escape attempt.

This film is quite good at presenting not only the physical privations of torture and starvation but also the mental toll exacted by the fear, boredom, and hopelessness of incarceration. Set against this backdrop, Dieter's refusal to give up becomes a powerful testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. Director / screenwriter Werner Herzog is famous for shooting his films in difficult locations; in this case, the gorgeous Thai countryside provides a stunning setting and steeps the film in authenticity. This may be Herzog's most conventional film, but it is well worth watching.
October 26, 2008

Close to being great

I had high expectations for this movie and for the most part was satisfied. It just felt like it should have gone the rated R direction for being a POW/war movie. I understand it was more than anything an inspirational movie about survival but Christian Bale's character seemed to take the situation a little too lightly. This was the major issue in the movie for me. Other than that it was a very good looking movie that I enjoyed watching. October 16, 2008

Excellent

It's been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre's worst banalities.
The film is sometimes an expansion, condensation, and retelling of the same basic tale Herzog told in his classic 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. That film chronicled the life and capture, over Laos, of a German born U.S. Navy Pilot named Dieter Dengler, who spent six months as a prisoner of war in Laos, before escaping with six other men into the jungle. Only Dengler was known to have survived. Rescue Dawn details and condenses many aspects of the earlier film, and is well acted by a stellar cast, well directed by Herzog, and brilliantly cinematographed by Peter Zeitlinger, who melds the stunning visuals of Thailand with Herzog's own classic `eye level realism' to evoke some of the same sorts of jungle imagery that made films like Aguirre: The Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo so impressive. On top of that is the wonderful film scoring by Klaus Bedelt, which is very minimal yet effective when employed; mixing the high and low forms of music Herzog is known for.
The plot is rather simple, and greatly condenses the tale the real Dengler tells within the earlier film.... The acting, especially on Bale's part, is outstanding. In each of his roles, Bale creates characters wildly different from each other. Comic actor Steve Zahn also shines as the timid Duane Martin, and Jeremy Davies makes for an excellent counterpoint to Dengler's exuberance, whether true or not. And the film also benefits by its fast pace. Despite being 125 minutes in length, the film never has `dead air'. It moves relentlessly from scene to scene, often being cut just before a typical Hollywood moment would arise in an action film. Thus, Herzog gives the viewer their Hollywood steak while not clogging their arteries with the mindless fat.
Yet, despite all its excellent points, at its heart, this film, unlike the documentary version of Dengler's life, is simply a deeper action film (a sort of leaner, meaner The Bridge On The River Kwai); it lacks the overall intellectual depth, probing, and agon that defines great art and suffuses Herzog's fictive classics from earlier in his career, even as it is a significantly better work of art than such a similarly themed and lauded film as The Deer Hunter. Rescue Dawn, however, and despite its near miss at greatness, is certainly a must see for those people who want to get a richer perspective on the Vietnam War, and deserves its place alongside Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket as unique visions of that war. But, to get an even fuller sense of what the war and Dieter Dengler were all about, watch Little Dieter Needs To Fly right afterwards. It's called eating the cake whilst having it, too; but, more than that, one will find that the cake is also surprisingly healthy and enlivening. Keep cooking, Werner!
September 17, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...