Few filmmakers have a better eye for recognizing fascinating people—and a willingness to stray off the beaten path to tell their stories—than Werner Herzog. Sometimes, even, the German-born director will deem them to be of such extraordinary interest that he’ll mine the same material twice, once for a documentary and again for a narrative film. Such is the case with the action-thriller Rescue Dawn—due in theaters in Vegas on July 20—which he adapted from Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
In the 1997 doc, Herzog introduced viewers to Dieter Dengler, a Navy airman shot down and captured in Laos during the early stages of the Vietnam War. Incredibly, Dengler fell in love with flying as a wee lad, while witnessing allied bombers attempt to obliterate his hometown in the Black Forest of Germany. As soon as he turned 18, Dengler made his way to the United States, where he attended college and joined the Navy, expressly to become a fighter pilot.
After being captured and passed around by various guerrilla groups, he was taken to a jungle outpost with other POWs, most in rougher shape than he was. Fearing the worst, he hatched a desperate escape plan as a last-ditch alternative to starving or being beaten to death, but it was only partially successful. Only he and fellow POW Duane Martin avoided being killed. Their journey through the wilds of Laos proved to be just as harrowing as their treatment at the hands of the guerrillas, only this time, the enemy took the form of a bear, monsoon rains, leeches, crashing waterfalls and machete-wielding villagers.
Herzog’s interviews with Dengler, who died in 2001, were conducted in his Marin County mountaintop home, Germany, Laos, Thailand and an airplane graveyard somewhere in the American desert. His insight into the twin ordeals of growing up in postwar Germany and facing death again in the jungles of Southeast Asia is remarkable, and no screenwriter could improve on his personal recollections of the journey back to safety.
In Rescue Dawn, Christian Bale plays Dengler and Steve Zahn portrays Martin. It will be interesting to see if their reenactments can do justice to—let alone improve upon—Dengler’s storytelling skills and Herzog’s reflective narrative. In a postscript, Herzog captures the Navy’s final salute to the former POW, which came in the form of a full military funeral at the Arlington National Cemetery and a flyover by a squad of F-14s.