Released in the heart of the summer of 2007, Rescue Dawn was a film long forgotten when the awards season came around. If you listened close enough to the dark horse predictions from critics you would hear Christian Bale’s name brought up from time to time. After finishing the film, I was prepared to join the small, but growing bandwagon of critics cheering on the overlooked film… then my eyes were opened to the real story.
The film tells the true story of Lt. Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a Naval pilot shot down over Laos in 1966. He is captured by forces sympathetic to the Viet Cong and is eventually detained in a remote POW camp. Already inside the camp are a handful of other prisoners, including two Americans – Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) and Gene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies). Rounding out the group are a couple of quiet Thai prisoners, and a sickly looking prisoner from Hong Kong named Y.C. Unlike Dieter, all the men have been in the camp for over a year, and it shows. The frail men warm to Dieter and take to showing him around the camp, helping him learn the name of the guards, and adjusting to the daily routine. All the while Dieter is absorbing the information and forming his escape plan. He rallies the men and urges them to stick together to try and find one last chance at freedom. Will they escape? Can they survive in the jungle?
Writer-Director Werner Herzog moves the film along at quite a nice pace. The scenery is beautiful and stifling at the same time. Dieter’s rush from the fresh wreckage of his plane seems to spiral him into a twisting maze of cliffs, rivers, and never-ending miles of emerald green. Herzog throws himself and his cast into the untamed landscape, and even drags the audiences through the thick walls of branches and vines.
In the middle of it all is the hero, Dieter Dengler. You can feel the absolute love that Herzog has for his epic hero. In fact, Rescue Dawn is not the first time he has covered Dieter’s story. In the 1998, he made a documentary about Dieter Dengler’s story titled Little Dieter Needs to Fly. (If you suddenly had a flashback to Martin Short’s character in Three Amigos!, you’re not the only one.) It is this hero worship though that slowly undoes the film. There is no doubt that Dieter Dengler is an amazing man, and one that showed unbelievable courage and heart. However, you should not raise a person’s heroics at the expense of the brave and heroic actions of others.
Yet that is exactly what Herzog does in this film. All of Dieter’s fellow POWs are shown at best, to be sickly and weak, and at worst, manic and dishonest. In reality, that was not the case at all. The character of Gene DeBruin is played with unstable aloofness by a dangerously thin Jeremy Davies. There is a key scene in the film that portrays DeBruin as a broken, untrustworthy madman. It is a powerful scene that makes you feel disgusted and frustrated with the character… and in reality, it did not happen like that. Herzog admits in the supplemental material that he was wrong about the actions of DeBruin, and that he wishes he could have inserted in the real story about Gene, but that he didn’t learn about it in time. The issue I have with that is that Herzog has been working with Dieter Dengler’s story since the mid-to-late 90’s. Add to that the alteration of other important events in the film, and I cannot let an, “oops, I didn’t know,” excuse quell my unease with the film. I understand that the vast majority of movies that claim to be based on true events are just feeding us the stories as they think we want to see them. In a case like this, where there is such an interesting story to be told just by telling the truth, I see no reason to make drastic changes.
In the end, if you view the movie as a fictional tale, you will be treated to a solid story. There is no denying the visual talent of Herzog and his crew. Every member of the cast went above and beyond for this film, and none of them could ever be accused of phoning in their performances. Any award buzz they garnered was well deserved. If only the real story could have been told….
*If you are interested in seeing the movie, skip these links until after you’ve finished it*