Werner's back in the jungle

Rescue Dawn - 3/5

Director Werner Herzog seems to have a predilection for jungle stories after Aguirre Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. He also has a reputation for pushing his actors to the limits and beyond. So the pairing with Christian Bale, an actor who in the likes of The Machinist has demonstrated a willingness to really punish himself physically for a role, seems a good one. Bale is once again on pound-shedding form to tell the true story of Dieter Dengler - a US pilot who crashed in Laos at the start of the Vietnam war, but managed to escape to freedom.

The story clearly fascinates Herzog as he has already made a documentary about it - Little Dieter Needs to Fly.

He handles to details of Dieter's survival well and the friendship formed with fellow prisoner Duane (Steve Zahn) is well done, as are some of the gruesome things they need to go through both to get free and to survive. And this despite Herzog's style being rather detached emotionally. Its the big action moments that lose focus and are less convincing - the plane crash is a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous as a realistically disintegrating plane has an unbelievably unharmed pilot just plop down right next to it. Similarly, Duane's exit doesn't quite work whilst the eventual rescue feels somehow anti-climactic and unsatisfying.

Bale is as good as you would expect from him, but Zahn, in his most serious role to date is an absolute revelation and actually provides the film with what emotion it does have.

Its still a good film, but not quite what it might have been, given a genuinely fascinating and heroic story.