Rescue Dawn

Dieter Dengler, a German-born American pilot, is shot down on a covert mission over Laos and taken prisoner. In the camp there are men who have been held for a long time, all of them spent. Dengler makes a plan to escape and tries to convince the others. Werner Herzog directed. It is the fiction version of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Christian Bale plays Dengler, Steve Zahn plays Duane and Jeremy Davies plays Gene DeBruin. It was shot in Thailand over forty-four days. The actors lost serious weight. To manage Bale's schedule the film was shot in reverse chronological order, so he could put the weight back on as production went along. Against a 10 million dollar budget it took 7.2 million, ranking 178th at the 2007 box office. Home video closed the gap, with roughly 25 million dollars from DVD sales alone. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 90 percent. Roger Ebert called it perhaps the most believable film Herzog had made, and Ann Hornaday called it an original addition to the war film canon. There is a dispute over accuracy. Gene DeBruin's brother and the survivor Phisit Intharathat said the escape plan predated Dengler's arrival and that DeBruin showed far greater heroism than the film allows. Who it is for: viewers who like survival films and Bale's physical transformations. Who it is not for: anyone who would take it as a literal record. People who were there objected to how the credit is distributed.