"Rescue Dawn"

"Rescue Dawn" is writer/director Werner Herzog's latest film. It is a dramatized account of Viet Nam vet, Navy pilot Dieter Dengler's escape through the jungle from a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos in 1966. Herzog had made a documentary about the subject in 1997 titled "Little Dieter Needs to Fly." Dieter was a German born, immigrant, arriving in America just after WWII. He died in 2001 of ALS at age 62. This recently released version, starring Christian Bale as Dengler, will reach a wider audience. Werner has stated that getting the financing delayed the project. It finally came through once Christian Bale had gotten the part of Batman in that franchise. Bale, from the start, wanted the title rôle of Dieter. Steve Zahn plays Duane Martin, Dengler's buddy who makes the escape with Dieter.

Christian Bale is one of Hollywood's finest male actors. For each of his rôles, he immerses himself thoroughly in his character before shooting even begins. For "Dawn," as he did in "The Machinist", a surreal murder mystery about a paranoid factory worker, he dieted to lose weight during shooting, so that by the end of the films, his physique is almost skeletal. Zahn, who usually plays blobby doofus comic sidekicks in films, shows sensitivity, loyalty, and an earnest mien as Martin in "Dawn." He too scaled down an impressive 40 pounds for his rôle. According to an interview with EW, Zahn liked himself skinny. "I kind of just looked good," he said.

In "Dawn" Bale depicts Dieter as a dedicated pilot and one of the boys during an early scene which takes place in the briefing room. He and about 20 other pilots are educated on the strategy of a secret mission to bomb enemy strongholds in Laos. They are shown a propaganda film about South Asians, the culture, and dos-and-don'ts about survival if taken prisoner. Throughout, the pitots razz everything from the narrator to their military buddies' parts in the film, no official calls them on it. After all, it's a dangerous mission and they all could end up dead. Let them have their fun. No one is to know about the project. They were warned and sworn to secrecy to not leak a word even to their families. The order to carry out the bombing was enacted just after the Gulf of Tonkin ruse that the US cooked up to go to war in Viet Nam. (Sound familiar?)

Herzog appears to have a love-hate relationship with the wilderness. Two of his films (and a documentary about the making of one of them), "Aquirre, Wrath of God," and "Fitzgarraldo," both starring his long time cohort and nemesis, Klaus Kinski (who also made the absolute best vampire in film history in "Nosferatu"), were shot on location in Central and South Amercan jungles. Herzog also made the documentary "Grizzly Man" about Timothy Treadwell, a man obsessed with bears. Treadwell ended up being killed by one, after spending several seasons in Alaska to film them. Herzog used Treadwell's footage in his documentary, but resisted including an audio tape and clips that were running during his mauling.

Herzog incoroporates archival film clips of the planes taking off from the carrier and the bombings early on in the film. He avoided using a hyped-up soundtrack of explosions. We see them, but don't hear them. Instead, we hear a soft, orchestral, original score by Klaus Badel which we are subtley aware of throughtout. This is a quiet movie, imbued with natural and ambient sounds, including those of jungle creatures, those screaming monkeys we hear in "Fitzgarraldo," and its documentry.

As Dieter, Bale shows the man's positive, almost cheerful, attitude, even in prison. His grin alone lights up the gloom of this windowless, bamboo hut. His seven fellow prisoners - -Thais and Americans - - are resigned, waiting for rescue they know won't come. Each night, the guards shackle their ankles to heavy wooden stocks, and handcuff them. Dieter, as a trained mechanic, fashions a pick from a purloined nail and practices releasing the handcuffs at night until he can do it in three seconds. He speaks of escape from day one. The others are reluctant. He finally gets them all on board with an unbeatable plan. When he and Martin carry out their end, the others prisoners disappear into the jungle, except one American, an addled, paranoic, "Eugene, from Eugene, Oregon," (Jeremy Davies) who had threatened to clue in the guards. Dieter and Martin let him find his own way as he pathetically whines, "Where am I gonna go?"

Though we know the outcome, the rest of the film still grips us as the two men struggle to keep hidden as the Pathet Laotian soldiers try to track them down. They hack through the jungle towards Thailand, fearing even small children going about their chores, in rainstorms and stifling humidity, fording swift rivers. Even taking cover when US pilots strafe them, thinking they are the enemy, as they wave frantically for help. The two starving emaciated men form a close bond. Dieter constantly buoys up a fading Martin who's on his last legs. Finally, in an open field, a helicopter hovers. Dieter is rescued as enemy fire streaks past.

Herzog's film iincludes the tragedy experienced by Dieter when he loses his buddy in a brutal attack. He has given us a harrowing, realistic tale of the spirit of survival of one man that is inherent in us all. Dieter was optimistic, assured, fearless, and full of fun. He believed in himself.