Rescue Dawn is Werner Herzog’s period biopic tribute to fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, whose incredible escape from a Pathet Lao POW camp is one of the few uplifting stories to have come out of Vietnam. The start of the film finds itself in 1966, when American pilots were being sent on classified missions to secretly bomb enemy targets in Laos. One of these missions was the first for Dengler, a German-American who had just completed his Navy pilot training and was ready to fly. Rescue Dawn follows the tragic crash landing of Dengler’s plane after the very first time he took flight; then details his capture, his torture. In a series of events which hover between short bursts of suspense and long stretches filled with despair, Rescue Dawn chronicles how Dengler rallied his fellow prisoners to escape from the enemy’s camp, only for Dengler to find himself and his friend Duane prisoners of the uncompromising jungle. After a torment which drags him through near starvation and insurmountable grief, Dieter finds his rescue, but not before the filmmaker entertains his political agenda.

I tried desperately not to politicize this film. I’d come to the theater to see Christian Bale give yet another fierce performance in one of his characteristically chosen, complex roles. I’d come to hear an original score by Klaus Badelt, who has yet to disappoint me in the music he always synchs so brilliantly with the action on screen. And yes, I had come to absorb a piece of Vietnam, but absorb I could not; Rescue Dawn’s political sentiments were aggressively blunt in a most non objective way. Christian Bale, who stars as Dieter Dengler, is strong here, but this is not his best. I suppose this may be because he was starving on set (Bale lost significant pounds for the role of a malnourished POW.) But there are other reasons Bale just didn’t convince me on screen – most of which probably weren’t his fault

In Rescue Dawn, we see Dieter first in preparation for his initial flight, receiving instructions with the rest of his unit as to how confidential their mission must be kept. There is significant screen time devoted to ridiculing a mock military survival video the crew is forced to watch, the type of video which would be about as effective to the stranded soldier as a sex ed video is to a ninth grader. After his plane crashes and he abandons his radio for fear his communication would be infiltrated, Dieter is captured. But at this, Herzog didn’t have his hero tremble in fear. Instead, Dieter smiles like a stupefied celebrity as he marches into a village full of people he couldn’t possibly have imagined benevolent. This performance was so exaggerated, so out of place, that I couldn’t help but draw ties between the military personalities of Dieter Dengler and….Forrest Gump.

Dengler behaves in ways I just can’t imagine authentic: He politely asks his captors to provide him a toilet as they tie him up in the village square and is shocked when they don’t acquiesce. “I need to take a shit!” screams Dengler as he starts to realize that the horrors of war include self defecation. I’m all for exposing such atrocities through film, so imagine my disappointment when wardrobe never followed up on Dengler’s repeated, embarrassed admissions for having soiled himself. Bale’s bottom was nice and clean the entire two hours and six minutes. If Herzog wanted to be ‘gritty’ and ‘real’ here, I wish he would have delivered the aforementioned excrement.

He sure did make American soldiers look clueless.

No matter where you stand retrospectively on America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam, such oversimplifications are detrimental to an intelligent opinion on either side of the conflict.

As the film progressed, Herzog didn’t relent. Dengler is asked to sign a document (which would somehow denounce his allegiance to his country) by an enemy captain who asks oh-so-sincerely, “Why are you in this war against us?” As Dengler finds himself interned in a war camp, he meets other American prisoners. One of them (Jeremy Davies) rambles on and on forever through a very forced monologue about the injustice of war, before he tells Dieter his name is Gene. Davies proved to be thoroughly annoying throughout the film, but, alas, I must give him credit for ‘shaping’ his character.

I was right disgusted with the way Rescue Dawn represented the Vietnamese through absolutely ridiculous caricatures. I’d have thought Herzog would attempt to terrify his audience with the brutality of the POW camp guards. Instead, he dabbled in a very sick, uncertain brand of humor, narrowing the film’s introspection into the Vietcong by illustrating a trio of soldiers much like the three stooges: a midget, a mute, and a martial artist who turned flips every time he heard gunshots. Why, Werner Herzog, why?

Most plainly, Rescue Dawn is poorly written and directed. What saves this movie are its performances, namely that of Steve Zahn, who really blew me away as Dengler’s dying comrade, Duane. Indeed the story of such undiscovered war heroes is what Rescue Dawn should have been, probably intended to be about. Instead, this film got way too caught up in commentary and cliché and, subsequently, crashed and burned.

Liz Licorish

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