Werner Herzog
2006
120 minutes
This is a Werner Herzog directed biopic of Dieter Dengler, whose story of being shot down in the jungle and then escaping a POW camp in the Vietnam War had already been told in Werner Herzog's documentary called Section 68. It stars Christian Bale as Lieutenant Dengler, with Steve Zahn co-starring as Lieutenant Duane Martin. Soon you may have recognized Steve Zahn, whom you could never quite place, as "the less belligerent drunk man-child from Linklater's SubUrbia", as well as many other films you've never seen such as National Security, That Thing You Do!, and War for the Planet of the Apes. He also had a stint in The White Lotus How you feel about his character will likely be influenced by whether you are going in cold or whether you've seen him in some other part more recently.
Dieter Dengler, however, is Batman. And Jeremy Davies, who plays Sgt. Gene DeBruin in this, is Charles Manson and Corporal Upham and you've got a bad feeling about him already, which is a bit uncomfortable if you know the real Gene DeBruin didn't survive his escape attempt and get to tell his own side of things. The director admitted taking some "artistic liberties" with his story in this movie.
This isn't bad as Vietnam vet biopics go. It certainly isn't glamorous, and you get the idea that the dudes tasked with guarding and interrogating half-starved POWs weren't exactly the best and brightest that the enemy's armed forces had to offer. This is no heroic Great Escape. It's a bunch of desperate, half-starved POWs barely outwitting some dullards tasked with (barely) keeping themselves and their dysentery-plagued prisoners alive while the grown-ups are off fighting an active war.
One of your more illustrious local relatives, whom you never had the opportunity to meet, was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. Everyone was quite proud of his service and he was celebrated accordingly, but you have the feeling he would prefer not to have had the experience in the first place. Surviving this meant not dying while being semi-starved on a seventy mile forced march and enduring a lot of cruelty and misery, intentionally inflicted or otherwise. About 80,000 POWs began this march, with approximately 54,000 finishing it according to some sources.
You are aware that there are multiple ultramarathons inspired by this event. In those marathons, toned and practiced athletes are invited to pay tribute to the original participants by putting on a costume and a heavy rucksack and running a similarly long race under somewhat tamer conditions for far lighter stakes. In at least some of these races, participants are awarded a gnarly looking shirt with a dramatic design featuring a soldier collapsing from sickness and exhaustion.
Time to choose something different: