Rescue Dawn

Directed by Werner Herzog, Rescue Dawn is the survival story of German-born American naval pilot Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale, Batman Begins) on the eve of the Vietnam War. Rescue Dawn reenacts Dengler’s encounters with one extremity after another, from plane crash to vengeful Laotian farmers. Unlike a lot of Herzog’s films, Rescue Dawn is unique in its optimism; however, the film seems to borrow the underdog narrative of some of his darker films, like Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Signs of Life, and fuse it with the unaffected pacing of some of his more mystical films, like The Enigma of Kasper Hauser or Even Dwarves Started Small, and made all the more credible by the fact that it is based on Dengler’s real life experiences which is also the subject of his 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.