This film was written and directed by Werner Herzog and thanks to some terrific acting and great cinematography, it was gripping from the start to finish.
It starred Christian Bale, who by now is well known for his crazy intense transformations. In this film, it looks like he lost at least 50 pounds. He played prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. His plane had been shot down.
Spoilers...
Having survived the crash, he is rather quickly captured. Not much longer afterward, he is placed in a low-security pow camp, where he is put together with at least five other American POWs. While in the camp, he devises a plan of escape. Once the plan is put into motion, he finds himself struggling to survive along with another POW that came along for the ride. Both are starving and very tired when they decide to risk it all by exposing themselves to the locals in an attempt to get some food. These locals were not having any of that and decide to hack up one of the POWs. Christian Bale is again alone, foraging to survive. This time it wouldn’t be long before he rescued.
Upon being rescued he is given the hero’s welcome back on the US base and aircraft carrier. Although this is all well and good, what the film left out was what happened to the other POWs. This was left to our imagination. Since this film was based on a true story, the truth probably is, they probably all ended up dying in the jungle. Like I mentioned previously, this film was gripping from start to finish. Highly recommended.
*****
