So much average

A Masterpiece!

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This isn't like other war movies so don't expect a Saving Private Ryan or even a Band of Brothers like drama. Rescue Dawn is one of the few mainstream efforts by legendary German auteur Wernor Herzog and you can see why- This isn't a war movie rather a survival film and it takes us dep into the jungle where the main character (portrayed impeccably by Christian Bale) has to fight himself, his urges and nature. A scene of him devouring a raw snake can make you squirm. A good film that should be given a chance. (Herzog goes mainstream).

German director Werner Herzog is well known for his jungle-set pictures as well as his documentaries, and the look of this film is heavily inspired by both. It has a gritty, realistic edge to it that ties in with the fact that it's based on a true story, and Herzog's a guy striving for realism throughout. At the end of the day, RESCUE DAWN is simply another Vietnam P.O.W. flick, but that's fine as Hollywood hasn't made one in a while. This film has a taut and compelling narrative and benefits hugely from some excellent performances, especially from the central duo of Christian Bale and Steve Zahn. Bale, who loses weight again for the role after his turn in THE MACHINIST, is typically excellent, but it's Zahn who comes as the biggest surprise. This is a guy typically typecast in comedies but he gives a great dramatic turn here.The story is pretty predictable and infused with a level of grittiness that incorporates torture, hardships, deprivation, and killing. It comes as no surprise that the second half is an escape picture, with our heroes tackling everything the jungle throws at them in their bid for survival. Not since Ruggero Deodato's gruelling cannibal epics circa 1980 has a film made us feel the sweaty confines of the jungle so much. A truly heartwarming ending lifts our spirits a little, but in the end this is a roller-coaster ride of emotion and another example of the triumph of the human spirit. Great stuff.

Rescue Dawn single-minded focus exposes some flaws, such as the film's disinterest in Dengler's captors who are, like Dengler, slowly starving to death and who think they are defending their country. But that focus also makes the story gripping - there is danger everywhere and a sense that Dengler (Christian Bale) is so resourceful that he thinks of almost everything but that it's the "almost" that could get him killed.The film is inspiring and gripping, but it plays it cool. It doesn't pump up Dengler's heroism, for instance, because it knows it doesn't need to. It doesn't strain to make big statements about Vietnam or to assert a political argument because it knows all those arguments have been made.

Rescue Dawn (2006)A well made, fairly routine war and prisoner-of-war film. I suppose nothing is routine in these matters, but the film makes it all weirdly familiar: captured, struggling to survive, plotting an escape, and escaping. Hey, this isn't news: it's in the title.I'm not sure if Christian Bale is what you'd call a great actor—he's a convincing Batman, at least in the latest versions, but he's up and down in his other movies. Here he tries his best, and you can feel him acting his heart out. He even seems to eat bugs and bites a snake (or close to it) to make it convincing. But there might be such a thing as trying too hard, revealing a lack of something more intuitive and convincing.But he is the movie, so get used to it. And he's not terrible, even if he has an inexplicable grin half the time. Let's not forget this is a Werner Herzog movie, and that means it's got something special here that great directors bring out whether they want to or not. Here it's a combination of violence and human excess. The excess is not just violence, but thoughtlessness, and kind of childish cruelty that Herzog shows both the captors enjoy and the townspeople seem to at least put up with. I don't know if this is exposing the horrors of war, as some say this movie does, but it does show the willingness of the director to go someplace uncomfortable, to stir the view.Stirred I was. It's a good movie. It has such irksome flaws I have trouble seeing the strengths, too, but the evocation of a Laotian prison camp is decent enough. I think his idea of fellow prisoners is pure Hollywood, however, and it seems more like "The Great Escape' than it should, given all the differences in cultures—and directors.How does it end? Hmph. Wait and see.