Rescue Dawn (2007)

Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :(Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :(Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :( Cried so much on this one :(

This is a movie which shows us a completely different side of being a prisoner (of war, in this case) and a side which explains a lot about humans in captivity.You know how every once in a while you come across a news story about how some dictator in a third world is torturing the whole country and you can't help but wonder "Why don't these people rebel?". Well, Rescue Dawn will give you a clue.Going into this, I expected a lot of torture and graphic violence but to my surprise there wasn't that much of it. Sure, prisoners are tortured but not to the extent you see in other films about being a POW. The main focus of the story is the six men's daily struggle with their own minds as they rot away in the prison camp.One of the best parts is how the title of the "bad guy" changes hands throughout the story - Fellow prisoners, United States armed forces, Viet Cong, the jungle - everything and everybody is a friend at one time and foe at other.Don't expect explosions and fast paced actions scenes but if you like war movies and prison movies this is a must see!

As far as filmmaking goes, there aren't a lot of movie makers who can hold a candle to Werner Herzog (AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, FITZCARALDO, COBRA VERDE, and NOSFERATU speak most eloquently for themselves) and, while RESCUE DAWN may not be among his Best-Ever, it's still Savvy Cinematic Storytelling. If I have one gripe, it's with the casting of Christian Bale- and not because of anything else he's ever done, but because he just doesn't seem to really Resonate as the main character here; it's as if he were shoe-horned into the role. It would be interesting indeed to see Herzog tackle the Kafkaesque case of, say, one of the "Gitmo' detainees- or do yet another version of George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (a Timeless Classic that, like Shakespeare's HAMLET, could be remade ad infinitum and never grow old)...

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.