Rescue Dawn

Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog returns to direct his first feature since 2001's Invincible with this dramatic action film inspired by his own 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and detailing the escape efforts of a German-American pilot who was taken as a prisoner-of-war after being shot ...more

Rescue Dawn is not the first film for which Christian Bale has undergone a dramatic physical transformation. Twice over, he has chiseled and toned his way to an Adonis-worthy physique to play the Caped Crusader, and, antithetically, lost nearly seventy pounds for his role in The Machinist. Portraying a P.O.W. in director Werner Herzog’s latest fictional effort required that he tend toward the emaciated end of the weight spectrum, displaying, yet again, a level of dedication to his craft that few ...more

In his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Werner Herzog accompanied Dieter Dengler as he retraced his escape from a POW camp in Vietnam. The story has obviously struck a strong chord with the German director. Several years later he shot a fictionalized version of the story starring Christian Bale as Dengler and Steve Zahn as his buddy Duane. It is still a low budget endeavor, built around Herzog's shaky cam guerilla aesthetic. No matter how much good will you allow, the opening and closing ...more