Rescue Dawn - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
CHRISTIAN Bale is no stranger to suffering for his art. Having lost an incredible amount of weight for The Machinist, he’s back to physically anorexic looks in Rescue Dawn, the true story of a Navy pilot’s desperate battle for survival in Vietnam.
Directed by Werner Herzog, of Grizzly Man fame, the film follows the fortunes of cocky pilot Dieter Dengler after he’s been shot down over Laos in 1966, captured and transported to a bamboo prison where he’s forced to endure some horrific treatment at the hands of desperate guards.
Dengler eventually manages to make a violent escape a few months later but faces an equally desperate battle against the environment with a colleague (played by Steve Zahn). The ensuing adventure represents Herzog’s most commercial offering yet but is still enlivened by the director’s visual flair and Bale’s dedicated commitment to ensuring his character’s progression feels authentic.
Having caught the film earlier this year, we can guarantee that you’ll be feeling as exhausted as Dengler by the time the film reaches its conclusion.
Ironically, Herzog recruited Bale for jungle duty after he’d completed The Machinist and right before the star donned the batsuit for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, thereby benefitting from the training and dieting the Welsh actor had been through for the anorexia chiller.
The film itself is a follow-up to Herzog’s own 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly, which is based on the same real-life character. But in Herzog’s own words, Rescue Dawn represents some “unfinished business” given that “so much was untold” in the documentary.
And he’s full of praise for his star, Bale, who he credits with being better than he’s ever been before in Rescue Dawn – and perfectly suited to the role of Dengler, a German-born pilot who grew up in the small town of Wildberg in the Black Forest region.
Dieter’s father was killed while serving in the German army during the Second World War but his grandfather was declared a political enemy of the Nazis for being the only citizen in his town who didn’t vote for Hitler.
The pilot has subsequently credited his grandfather’s resolve as being a major inspiration to him during his time in Laos, especially his grandfather’s willingness to stand up for what he believed in despite great danger. His first experience with aircraft, meanwhile, came when he was very young and he witnessed Allied aircraft flying over his town from his bedroom window. From that moment, he wanted to be a pilot and continued to fly planes until his death in 2001.
Rescue Dawn opens in UK cinemas later this year.