Rescue Dawn: A-

Imagine for one moment that all the artifice surrounding and implanted in films was gone. All of the CGI effects and the grotesquely distorted villians and the "breathtaking" romance - all of it gone. Oh and the pesky precocious animals, they're gone too. Imagine then that where once a plot may have turned on events spawned by writers' brains, they now blossom - guided by the hand of Fate (which fits nicely into our motif of real life, right?). Imagine still that there would no longer exist actors desparately mugging for the camera; instead, and with a rigor and passion to be admired, they became their characters and invited us to watch their imitations instead of their performances. Imagine all of this at once and guess what? We've just envisioned something pretty close to Werner Herzog's lean, atmospheric Rescue Dawn - the tale of an escaped, ordinary POW played by an extraordinary Christian Bale.

Bale is Dieter Dingler, a Navy pilot assigned to bomb Laos in the '60s who was shot down and taken prisoner. As a prisoner he meets a few zonked out cats, chief among them is Gene (Jeffrey Davies), and wastes no time in formulating his escape. It'd be spoiling nothing to say he manages to do so - along with Duane (Steve Zahn), a fellow POW - and everything to divulge their experiences outside the camp. See, writer-director Herzog works in a rich, elemental style, building characters and relationships with broad, almost silent strokes and as such the final third of the film - their escape - is riveting and ripples with sinewy visual and emotional muscles.

Not to say that the actors don't provide the film with enough flavor and soul as it is. Bale, an always versatile performer, here astounds with a quiet, earnest, rock-solid piece of work. His counterpoint is found in Zahn who plays out his emotionally weak character with a fragility and grace that took me by surprise (being as he is standard comic foil in such things as Daddy Daycare). And I could never forget Jeremy Davies as the dead-eyed zombie nutzo Gene. Davies speaks in a particular flavor of hippie drawl and his every utterance is hilarious in a poignant, absurd way...that is until he takes a dive off the deep end, at which point his mania become palpable and thrilling.

Rescue Dawn is directed with clever image layering (and, with dare I say, far more skill than Oliver Stone) and there's alot to like, and partake of, in the humid jungles of Herzog's Laos; from the skittering score (to reflect the mental shambles of desertion and desolation) to the sunken faces (to reflect the poor nutrition), the film has a unique beauty - though it helps that it was all shot on location. And though it grows hazy and stilted from time to time (the scenes of their imprisonment drag on a tad too long) the stripped-down power of Dawn will sink into you and be difficult to get out.