Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn – August 2, 2007

"Rescue Dawn" is a peculiarity. It's one of the only war films I've seen that has neither a pro- nor anti- agenda; it's just there. Herzog even skimps on the whole triumph-of-the-human-spirit shtick - and this is mostly a good thing - until he resorts to a bizarrely out-of-place freeze-frame ending. The unorthodox problem this movie suffers is that the main character is offbeat, but empty - a Teutonic pragmatist who operates solely on instinct and attitude. Dieter, a real-life P.O.W. that Herzog profiled in a documentary, is unflappable; when captured and bound by the Viet Cong he complains insistently that he has to go to the bathroom. His anomic weirdness is darkly comical, which keeps one’s attention in concert with the unevenly-paced, rather conventional capture-and-escape yarn. Bale puts his heart in the role, but can't put in his soul; the character either buries his or is simply lacking. The only metaphor or motif that I could discern was Dieter's love of aviation, but he seemed to have no other motivation to break free. Herzog even skimps on his soldier's camaraderie; Dieter shows few hints of being affected by the loss of his closest friend in the film, Steve Zahn (who is good as his quirky, almost homosexual follower), especially after he's back with his apparently dearer old pals from his aircraft carrier, who had hastily been dropped from the movie after Dieter's plane crash very early on. Frankly, I think the caustic proto-hippie played by Jeremy Davies (bearing a resemblance to Charles Manson) is a much more interesting character than our “hero”. Herzog doesn't editorialize or force meaning out of the material, but it alas lacks the ambiguity that provokes thought. "Rescue Dawn" is a niftily austere character study, but something fundamental is missing in action.