Rescue Dawn Review

German new wave director Werner Herzog takes some tentative steps into Hollywood with a typically leftfield foray in Rescue Dawn.

The story is about German born American fighter pilot, Dieter Dengler (Bale), who’s thrilled when he’s finally given the opportunity to fly his first bombing mission over Vietnam. Things go awry for our eccentric protagonist when he’s shot down over the Vietnamese jungle and quickly becomes a prisoner of the Vietcong. Stuck with inmates that would blend in well at a Frank Zappa convention, Dengler plots his escape eventually leading to a struggle against the environment that surrounds him.

As an initial attempt at a Hollywood film Rescue Dawn crashes in the green wilderness between art house and the main stream never truly finding its way out. The film is marred with Herzog’s genuine admiration for this true tale in which he documents for a second time. This is present in the script’s failings which often features bizarre dialogue clearly plucked verbatim from the accounts Dengler made to Herzog years ago.

Accounts of his life within the film feel stuffed in and unnatural and at times conversation between characters seem as if they were scripted by the former pilot himself. It makes for a hard acting job but Bale and his supporting cast are excellent as world weary lunatics confined to the bamboo prison bars and paranoid delusions.

A disappointing script, but compelling performances are typical of a film that is not sure of where it wants to go. For Herzog fans there is an unrequited desire to be confronted by the bizarre and engaging emphasis that is so characteristic of his films.

As for those who will approach the film on the grounds of Christian Bale as a POW fighting for his life, they will perhaps feel short changed by the lack of cut throat dialogue and fast paced action that Herzog believes is beneath him.

This is by far one of Herzog’s more accessible films, but for a man who has made over 50 films there is a nervous ambiguity about which direction it wants to take. But then perhaps that’s fitting for a film about a pilot lost in the jungle.