Watched today: Rescue Dawn
Observations:
- Christian Bale really likes messing with his weight, doesn’t he?
- This is the first film I remember seeing Steve Zahn in (he was apparently in Sunshine Cleaning, which I remember seeing at my university’s student cinema, but I don’t recall him from it), and he’s fantastic in it. I mean, everyone is - there’s something powerful in the fact that this film opens with the typical sort of gung-ho attitude of any war film, and quite rapidly descends into something altogether darker and more harrowing. A few echoes of Apocalypse Now in there, but that probably goes without saying.
- It’s impressive (though, knowing Herzog, not surprising) quite how real this all feels - there’s a scene with a massive mudslide, and when Zahn is on the ground choking back the dirt, it’s clear that he actually is. You wonder how much grime was applied in makeup, and how much they accumulated just by virtue of where they were filming.
- The bit with the leeches made me squirm.
- A lot of people didn’t like the music (composed by Klaus Badelt, who did the first Pirates movie) - honestly, I felt it just tied things together well. A lot of long, haunting notes.
- A horrifying film bookended on both sides by total elation. For Herzog’s most “Hollywood” film, it still feels fresh.