Rescue Dawn - 2006 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Christian Bale, Steve Zahn
Director:  Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog has gone all over the world making movies, but even so, his films tend to have a very similar protagonist and pattern: they're about a solitary man, with a dream or goal, being confronted by forces of chaos which oppose his goal, both from within his own heart, but especially from the natural world.  It's hard not to read the director's heart into his protagonist - his crazed leading men have dreams seemingly beyond grasp, but so too must the director, making movies in the harshest environments in the world.  Yet again in Rescue Dawn, we're in an inhospitable jungle, and it's an environment Herzog knows how to shoot well.

Herzog had already made a film about this incident, a documentary called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which I haven't seen, but even so, he infuses the movie with characteristic weirdness that a regular Hollywood director would've exorcised.  The narrative suffers, but who cares - Rescue Dawn is a stock film plot regardless.  It should be watched for the extra touches.