Rescue Dawn

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2006

Rescue Dawn
Werner Herzog
USA, 2006
English 120 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Gibraltar Entertainment & Production LLC
Executive Producer: Kami Naghdi, Jimmy DeBrabant, Michael Dounaev, Elie Samaha, Nick Raslan, Gerald Green
Producer: Steve Marlton, Elton Brand, Harry Knapp
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cinematographer: Peter Zeitlinger
Editor: Joe Bini
Production Designer: Arin ‘Aoi’ Pinijvararak
Sound: Paul Paragon
Music: Klaus Badelt
Principal Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies
Production: Gibraltar Entertainment & Production LLC

Werner Herzog’s 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly tells the extraordinary story of a German-born American Navy pilot, Dieter Dengler, who crash-landed in Laos during the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned in a POW camp and brutally tortured. He then engineered an extraordinary escape with the other inmates, both American and Vietnamese. Near starvation and overwhelmed by the forces of nature closing in on him, Dengler was rescued at last by United States choppers that happened to be flying over the area.

Christian Bale plays Dengler in Rescue Dawn. It is one of this accomplished actor’s most breathtaking performances. From all-American wisecracker to beaten-down victim to Messianic, rifle-toting outlaw, Bale inhabits his character with such a fierce and passionate intensity that one recalls the similarly riveting performances of Herzog’s muse, Klaus Kinski. More to the point, the film’s survivalist snarl, its intense anti-heroism, Dengler’s Sisyphean attempts to overcome predatory Mother Nature, and Herzog’s abiding love of freakish wise men echo the filmmaker’s earlier masterpieces, Cobra Verde and Fitzcarraldo in particular.

Bale is matched step for step by a group of accomplished character actors, including the wonderful Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies as fellow POWs who help Dengler hatch his plans. The camerawork is characteristically stunning, although simpler and more direct than in Herzog’s past films; the script is equally propulsive.

This clarity actually is a blessing. It allows a ruminative viewer to quickly intuit Herzog’s motives for making the film at this historical moment—although it’s not that tough to do the math. After all, Dengler is captured during a “secret war” waged to extract America from a quagmire abroad. He encounters brutal hostility from the Laotian guards and villagers he encounters. And he is tortured, contrary to the Geneva Conventions. Sound familiar?
—Noah Cowan