Rescue Dawn Review

(Trying to catch up with some movies I've missed talking about. I saw "Rescue Dawn" a few weeks ago but neglected to write anything about it.)

I live in Red Deer and when a film like Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" comes to town, it's

a blessing because I would classify it as an arthouse film and we don't usually get arthouse films very often especially in the busy summer season. "Rescue Dawn" is the amazing true story about a vietnam airfighter named Dieter Dangler (Christian Bale who is fastly becoming one of my favorite actors) who is shot down during a secret mission, is captured and sent to a POW camp. There he meets other POW's most of whom seem to have gone a bit mad from being confined for so long. The two other main POWs are played by Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies. Zahn plays Duane who forms a close friendship with Dieter. Davies in his best Charles Manson impression plays Gene who believes they will be released anytime soon.

The other prisoners are far more pessimistic and Dieter soon becomes obsessed with escaping. The escaping seems to be the easy part, the hard part would be surviving in the jungle. You would have to be a bit mad to even think about escaping and since this is a Werner Herzog film Dieter would have to be.

I could not compare this film to any other film I saw this summer because it was so different, we are asked to spend two hours with people who have pretty much gone insane. But there's a kind of heroism in Dieter's madness which is probably what Herzog finds so fascinating. Bale is the kind of actor who dives right into his role so it's not surprising that he's really eating maggots in a kind of crazy glee or eating snake skin. We totally believe he's losing his mind particularily when he starts seeing a dead friend in his mind. Zahn is also very effective in what I think is the best role I've seen him in. Dieter and Duane make a good team and their off-beat friendship is very touching.

The film itself reminded sometimes of "Apocolypse Now" especially in its jungle scenes. It sometimes felt like a horror movie masquerading as a POW movie. Herzog has always been fascinated with mad characters his most famous being "Aguire: The Wrath of God" right up to his documentary "Grizzley Man". But in those cases the person's madness becomes more counter productive where Dieter's madness is what makes him survive. This was a great and unique movie experience.