Rescue Dawn (2007)
Rescue Dawn is not a great Werner Herzog movie. Rescue Dawn is a very good studio movie that happens to be directed by Werner Herzog. This is not a backhanded compliment,Rescue Dawn is largely an engaging, sturdy, disciplined escape/man versus the extremities of nature film. But it lacks the charge of the truly crazy that powers Herzog’s Aguirre or Grizzly Man.
If Herzog was looking for a more bankable star who’s sensibility matches his own pet themes (or that of Klaus Kinski), he could have hardly done much better than Christian Bale, one of the best actors of his generation who happens to be obsessed with the variety of circumstances that can whittle a good looking actor away into a skeleton. Bale’s work (in my look at Harsh Times, I actually wrote that he deserves an easy paycheck romance to make some money and get some rest) is similar from film to film, but he hasn’t grown old yet, he finds a special twitch in each character, and he loves to score points on their blind, preening entitlement.
The same thing goes for Herzog, who gets away with returning to the same themes over and over because he so refreshingly unpretentious about it. A Herzog film is not an art house cruise, it may be indulgent, it may be partially unsuccessful but they are always, unquestionably, about what authentically haunts or powers Werner Herzog.
The lack of pretension, the matter of factness, the no bullshit one thing after another, the performances, Herzog’s typically masterful command of the ambient sounds of nature, the minute shots of plants and creatures, the startling dislocation of it all; these are the reasons Rescue Dawn doesn’t play like another battle veteran cry for Oscar. Herzog doesn’t sentimentalize Dieter or the other prisoners here, they are shown as men at the brink of madness, self-absorption and manipulation, and they act accordingly.
This affords Jeremy Davies the opportunity to do another of his Solaris shambling weirdo numbers. I don’t usually buy Davies (and I actually like the Solaris remake otherwise) but he works here, primarily because he pushes his gaunt lunched outness into the realms of the matter of fact. Steve Zahn, it must be said, is career defining here, but, again, there’s no comedian trying too hard to win your approval vibe. Zahn’s Duane is what he is, and it will probably, unjustly, do nothing for his career as a result.
The ending is too pat, regardless of whether it happened or not (the film is based on a true story, and is also a fictional redo of Herzog’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly). The patriotism of the end, the uplift, seem a little inappropriate and out of character with the demons that normally populate the head of a Herzog protagonist.
Otherwise though, Rescue Dawn is a very potent, stripped down entertainment. An old song (we need to team up to get away from the bad guys despite incredible odds) redeemed by an exceptional singer. Here’s hoping, though, that Herzog goes truly nuts again real soon, and brings Bale with him.
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