Werner Herzog has a thing for men who battle nature, said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. The German filmmaker is consistently drawn to male hubris; in film after film, he finds insanity and beauty in the masculine will to conquer. 'œBut of all the men he's measured, none, it seems, has moved him quite like Dieter Dengler,' a German-born U.S. soldier shot down over Laos in 1966. Herzog has already made a movie about Dengler, the 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, but now he gives the same subject matter a feature-film treatment. The true story really is extraordinary: After being captured and tortured in a jungle POW camp, Dengler managed a brilliant escape along with several other starving prisoners. Facts as thrilling as these need no embellishment'”and Herzog knows it, said Jessica Winter in Slate.com. In fact, some of the most extraordinary details of the ordeal have been left out of Rescue Dawn'”a bear that chased Dengler through the jungle doesn't appear here, nor do some of the more gruesome aspects of the prisoners' torture and deprivation. 'œClearly, Herzog doesn't wish to make a fetish out of the prisoners' woes or turn Rescue Dawn into a horror piece.' Even without sensationalizing Dengler's story, Herzog has made one of the most riveting prison-break movies of all time, said Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. As Dengler, Christian Bale delivers a remarkable performance, while Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies portray Dengler's prison mates as men 'œreduced to emaciated nubs of pure character.'
Rating: PG-13
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