Rescue Dawn

First, I need to make full disclosure. I do not like Christian Bale. There, I said it – the whole world is in love with him but something about him has always bugged me. I don’t actively avoid all of his movies, but he really doesn’t much float my boat. That said, he is perfectly cast as Dieter Dengler in Rescue Dawn. I don’t even mean that as an insult to the film.

Rescue Dawn is a war movie, straight up. It isn’t a political statement (necessarily), it isn’t about the agenda of filmmaker Werner Herzog, it’s about one man. One rather remarkable, very unusual young man who actually (sort of) lived this drama. We enter with Dengler (Bale) about to embark on his first mission in Vietnam. He’s a pilot – he always wanted to fly. He’ll get his chance in a covert operation involving bombing in Laos. It’s 1965 and even though the American public doesn’t know it, the war in Vietnam is already deep, murky and complicated beyond measure. Dieter doesn’t know that either. He’s there to do his duty and fly his missions. The operation does not go smoothly. Dengler is shot down in Laos and the film chronicles what happens to him, starting out alone in the jungle with pretty much nothing but his various idiosyncrasies to see him through. He doesn’t understand the nature of either his enemy or his surroundings. His lessons in both are swift and brutal as the film progresses through the many months of Dieter Dengler’s ordeal.

Rescue Dawn is the fictional portrayal of events Herzog depicted in his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. I don’t know how much is fact and how much is fiction, though parts of the dialogue are certainly embellished as no one has the clarity of memory for such complexities. But Herzog is clearly intimately familiar with his factual subject matter and the skeleton of the story is fascinating, making for an amazing canvas onto which he is able to turn fact into tense drama. Bale plays Dengler as an eccentric young man whose intensity makes others slightly uncomfortable. He’s also crazy (smart?) enough to reject “common sense” and/or the opinions of others when it comes to surviving this nightmare. He makes friends and enemies with equal ease and does not care. Survival is not a popularity contest and despite a skill set that seems at first glance particularly unsuited to handle these harsh conditions, Dengler proves to have intuition to make up for his lack of preparedness.

Christian Bale revels in this role. He gets a maniacal gleam in his eyes when he has an idea or a plan, his glee when he produces some unexpected gesture, item or skill is childlike in its focus and simplicity. Yet this is a smart man. He knows what he needs to do to get out of Laos – he doesn’t really have a grasp on the reality of such an undertaking, but that doesn’t stop him – and he’ll do what he thinks is necessary to make that happen. Bale fits here for me. Dengler isn’t always or entirely likable, and I don’t think Herzog set out to make him the perfect protagonist. His idiosyncrasies are off-putting and Bale plays them up, reducing the chances of Rescue Dawn becoming little more than propaganda. A good choice by both actor and director.

Supporting Bale is Steve Zahn in a role as far from his usual comedic shtick as could be. Anyone who associates him with things like Daddy Day Care needs to disabuse themselves of the notion that he’s a one trick pony. His character, a POW for two years, is sad and haunting and surely far more relatable and human than the eccentric Dengler. Zahn is really the one who shows us the ugly reality of the situation. He isn’t filled with courage or optimism; he’s worn out, starving and barely hanging on to any semblance of sanity. Zahn is brilliant here, bringing the rest of us into the world of Dengler through a character with weary wisdom and experience who is teetering on the brink and latches on to Dengler’s hopeful optimism.

Not everyone is going to like Herzog’s style. I admit it isn’t my favorite thing about the movie. His hyper-saturated initial colors fit the surreal situation well, but I have a bit of trouble with how he writes dialogue. Dengler’s monologues are fantastic, but when the characters converse, it always feels just a touch stilted and unnatural to me. English is not Herzog’s first language, and maybe I’m picking up on that, or it may simply be a stylistic choice I don’t prefer. Regardless, it’s a touch distracting but does little to reduce the power of the performances of Bale and Zahn or the fantastical and horrible detail of the story.

Rescue Dawn is the story of one man and his experience in Laos during the Vietnam War. But it’s also so much more than that. It’s a look at the beginnings of an incredibly controversial part of an incredibly controversial war, and it’s an individual portrait of “war is hell” that has been written in blood by man after man who didn’t make it out whole – or at all. It’s a very good film, with some stylistic aspects that I personally do not prefer, but excellent performances by Christian Bale and Steve Zahn that make it affecting, horrifying and almost uplifting. So much was yet to come in 1965, it’s hard to watch this film and not feel in your gut all the nightmares still to be lived. It’s also hard not to look at it and look at our current world and wonder if we’ve really learned anything at all in the over 40 years since Dengler was shot down. Violent and depressing, Rescue Dawn is also fascinating study of Dengler as a man and the Laotian jungle as a fearsome and lethal foe. Definitely recommended for fans of Herzog or Bale as well as those (like me) who don’t consider themselves fans of either. It’s a film well worth seeing.