POW Reviews POW Film “Rescue Dawn”

It takes resilience and determination to survive an ordeal, the more the ordeal, the more determination and resilience needed. Those who haven’t faced the prospect or reality of the extreme dangers in this world aren’t the best qualified to be reviewing those who have.

The professional film critics reviews have been favorable of the new film “Rescue Dawn,” about the escape by U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler from horrendous conditions during his capture in 1966 by Laotian communists.

But, too much, the reviews have focused on film-making or irrelevancies and many inserted their current political biases.

Instead, our review is from a POW who survived similar ordeals to Dieter Dengler.

The Washington Post’s review says, “It's an instant classic of the form, a portrait of courage and sacrifice at their most stirring, but subversively resisting cant and cliche.”

My local San Diego Union-Tribune film critic said of the director, “ Mostly [Werner] Herzog gets everything mud-real and ham-free. “

Most critics comment on the determination and resilience displayed by Dengler. For example, the Los Angeles Daily News film critic quotes Herzog: “Because America allowed him to become a pilot, he was so loyal to this country. He had the qualities I like about Americans – self-reliance, courage, optimism, loyalty. All in this man.”

Many critics, also, can’t resist inserting their own anti-Vietnam war and anti-military biases, like USA Today’s, “this is all about escape. And as prison-break movies go, Rescue ranks among the best. But in terms of what gave Dengler and his co-captives the resilience to survive their brutal prison camp in the Laotian jungle, we get little more than military jingoism and some surprisingly simple stereotypes. It's not enough, though, to derail the picture and the mesmerizing performance of Christian Bale, who plays Dengler.”

Showbiz’ Variety finds it important that, “This may be the first Vietnam-set film in history not to feature a bar of Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones or indeed any other rock music on its soundtrack.” Then Variety extends its inanity by reaching for an absurd comparison to Iraq: “Resonances with current situation in Iraq -- the deluded belief it will all be over soon, the scenes of torture that echo Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib -- are there, but not overstated.” Panties on head “echo” beatings, starvation, untreated jungle diseases!

After reviewing the reviews, one is still left wondering what clue has a bunch of film critics who’ve never come near to the conditions suffered by Dieter Dengler, nor probably never served in war, or served in the military.

In particular, I was interested in the determination and resilience displayed by Dengler. A snippet of dialogue: When asked what “got you through this ordeal?,” Dengler replied: “Empty what is full. Fill what is empty. Scratch where it itches.” Director Herzog says, “To me, those words are the essence of survival.”

It reminded me of my Marine Corps attitude training: “Every day’s a holiday and every meal a feast.”

I asked my friend Paul Galanti, shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and a POW for 7-years, about “the attitude among the POW’s that made survival, and overcoming sometimes, possible?”

Paul Galanti’s response:

Bruce, being a POW is a humbling experience. Like Marine Boot Camp, one is reduced to the bare essentials. The Marines build their charges into fabulous fighting machines. We POW’s re-built ourselves – usually into better men than we were before.

Galanti adds:

Bruce, Dieter got shot down after me and I didn’t know him in the fleet. All I know is what I hear and it’s all flattering to him. Everybody I know who knew him said he was the real McCoy. He was one of a handful who was totally prepared for captivity and planned ways to escape. The rest of us were prepared to die, but captivity? No way. So, out of sight out of mind went the prospect.

Indeed, of Americans captured in Laos, only about 10 returned alive (mostly because they were in the hands of the North Vietnamese). Not to disturb the escapism of the 1973 Paris Accords, any still alive in Laotian communist hands were abandoned. All we’ve gotten since are somes’ bones. As of 2005, “Of the 1,836 Americans missing from the Vietnam War, the remains of 375 are believed to be in Laos. Since the end of the war, 194 Americans have been accounted-for from Laos.” (For more about Laos POW/MIA’s see here.)

I then turned to another friend, Mike Benge, who suffered many of the conditions that Dieter Dengler had. Benge, captured in 1968, was led on a death march through South Vietnam and Cambodia to North Vietnam, chained in a cage, starved, diseased.

Benge, however, had made his mind up that he wouldn't die. He treated his ulcerated body by lying in creeks and allowed small fish to feed off the dead tissue (a primitive debridement), then caught the fish and ate them raw. He caught small, green frogs and swallowed them whole. He did everything he could to supplement his meager food ration.

By the time he reached the camp the Vietnamese called "the land of milk and honey" his hair was white and he was so dehydrated and emaciated that other POWs estimated his age to be over seventy years old. He was, at the time, only thirty-three.

Here’s Mike Benge’s review of “Rescue Dawn.”

The other night my daughter said, “Hey Dad, let’s go see a movie,“ and I replied, “Which one?” She said, “Rescue Dawn.” “Dad, it’s a movie about a Vietnam POW.” “I thought you’d like it, but then do you think watching it might bother you?” It was a rhetorical question, for she knew that I had no hang-ups over the Vietnam War and my incarceration.

I had heard of the movie, for there was a lot of chatter about it on the NAMPOW net; however, from some of the reviews, I thought it was probably just another “hokey” Hollywood exploitative movie. I remember that one reviewer called it as a “high-end, art-house friendly 'Rambo’ movie.” Others compared “Rescue Dawn” with other movies that German director Werner Herzog had made, and with other war and POW movies, but having nothing of substance to say. This not only gave me a case of the shorts, but what they said was an indication that the reviewers had no real-life experience or basis on which to competently review “Rescue Dawn;” for their world is fantasy. With this in mind, I said, “Let’s go Dira, I have to see it for myself.

If I were inclined to have nightmares, “Rescue Dawn” would have given me some bad ones; luckily I’m not. I wasn’t a pilot like Dieter Dengler; but I shared similar experiences as a civilian POW. For once, Hollywood got it right thanks to Herzog who captured the blood, sweat, tears, fear, emotions, hunger, the steaming and unrelenting jungle, and the fragility of man under the degrading and filthy conditions of POWs in the jungle camps of Indochina.

The depiction of Dengler being told he could escape torture and imprisonment if he signed a letter denouncing the United States could have easily been that of my friend Colonel Ted Guy, also captured in Laos but taken to Hanoi; and tortured he was for the entire stint of his incarceration. Dengler survived because he had the will to survive, for without it you succumbed to the horrendous conditions of your captivity. However, Dengler’s courage and heroism was not unique, and was found among the many POWs that were fortunate to survive captivity in the Vietnam War.

Through visual nuances, Herzog also captured the true situation of the war in Laos, where over 90% of the Americans lost in Laos were in territories under the total control of the North Vietnamese (NVA) (depicted in pith helmets and green uniforms). The NVA maintained jurisdiction over the POWs, even though they were farmed out for care to the Laotians. This was of course lost on the audience; but my opinion of Herzog as a director shot up dramatically. Eugene DeBruin, depicted in the movie as the one who stayed behind, survived the escape but was never released.

You left the theater knowing that you had seen one hell of a movie, and it wasn’t a “high-end, art-house friendly 'Rambo’ movie”; the difference being is that Dengler story was real not fantasy . And for sure, Dengler had conviction and was the real McCoy; something you can’t say for a lot of our legislators on Capitol Hill.

Mike Benge, civilian POW South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam ‘68-73

It seems that Hollywood prefers a narrative that veers Left, and exaggerates, to make Left points.