Perhaps the only two missteps in the film are the rather meager special effects Herzog uses in the sequence of Dengler’s airplanes in flight and crashing (his first ever use of special effects), and the scene where Dengler is captured while getting a drink of water. You just know the enemy will be behind him when he turns around. Yet, for every moment like those two, there are a dozen moments of excellence, such as Dengler relishing scraps of food the guards leave on a table, his being hung upside down, and the camera showing that perspective, and the reuse of two bits of film from the earlier documentary: a hilariously inapt military training film that even the Navy guys laugh at, and the reuse of one of the famous stock footage pieces from the Vietnam War — that of Agent Orange being dropped from above and defoliating everything in its path below. Herzog has cleaned up the footage to the point that some may not recognize it as decades old real footage.
The film has generated some controversy, mostly for how it portrayed the character of Gene DeBruin. His family has started a website claiming that Herzog has defamed the dead man. Also, the film shows six, not seven, prisoners, and posits Dengler as the only survivor, whereas there was one other survivor. Also, many critics carped that Herzog went for a Hollywood and pro-American ending in the film by celebrating Dengler’s return to the ship.
Yet, this is what really happened, and even the character of Dengler refuses to go along with the jingoism an interviewer tries to impose on him by asking what kept him going while a prisoner — belief in God and/or country? Dengler replies he only believes in wanting a steak. Those who impugn the film as jingoistic or triumphalist are thus showing their own anti-American biases (as well as typically American short attention spans and ignorance of details), not any biases the film betrays, for it is starkly apolitical and humanist. This could have just as easily been a film about a slave revolt in Classical Rome, a portrait of the Underground Railroad, or an escape from a Nazi death camp or Soviet Gulag. It only seems pro-American because the protagonists are American, an incidental fact of history.
The acting, especially on Bale’s part, is outstanding. In each of his roles, Bale creates characters wildly different from each other. Comic actor Steve Zahn also shines as the timid Duane Martin, and Jeremy Davies makes for an excellent counterpoint to Dengler’s exuberance, whether true or not. And the film also benefits by its fast pace. Despite being 125 minutes in length, the film never has ‘dead air’. It moves relentlessly from scene to scene, often being cut just before a typical Hollywood moment would arise in an action film. Thus, Herzog gives the viewer their Hollywood steak while not clogging their arteries with the mindless fat.
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