Congratulations, Werner Herzog. Your new film, Rescue Dawn, starring Christian Bale and his awesome beard, is admitted to the “Good War Movie Hall of Fame.”

This film will enter Archive C, “Viet Nam War-ish movies”, sub-categorized as “Prison-Break Film.” Here we have Christian Bale as Dieter Dengler, German-born U.S. fighter pilot, whose first mission is a highly classified bombing raid in Laos. After his first drop the wings to his plane are destroyed by burning junk from the explosion. He crash-lands, miraculously not breaking any bones, and ventures off into the Laos Amazon with only a knife and a custom-made bug tent. He is captured, tortured, and finally imprisoned with other fellow English-speaking war prisoners. He immediately decides he wants to escape, unlike his fellow inmates who hadn’t dreamed up such a crazy idea the one or two years they have already been there.

The film begins with some moving archival footage of Vietnam-era bombings shot from the plane. It’s hard not to sympathize with the poor huts and trees engulfed in flames and high-reaching sparks. Right away, the message here is “Bombing really sucks,” and you’re ready to not take sides whenever the conflict starts.

Next, we strap on our observation-caps as we watch Dieter and his fellow soldiers watch a cheesy prep video for surviving in the wild in case their plane crashes. One man in the crew has a whale of a time commenting the video Mystery Science Theater 3000-style as the rest of the room laughs. While it’s certainly ironic, it sort of fails to be funny. Whether or not that is the point, do not worry, the comic-relief will take its turn once Dieter finds himself in the prison camp. During the crash scene there is an odd lack of emphasis on how Dieter’s body ends up outside of the plane. But again, don’t fret now, because now you will have to cue edge-of-seat position as Dieter immediately has to pull his face out of the mud and, simply put, run and hide before he is finally outsmarted and captured.

The prison camp has a colorful collection of characters, inmates and guards alike. Among the six guards there’s Walkie-Talkie, the man who never talks, Jumbo, the friendly midget, and Crazy Horse, the over-energetic martial arts-obsessed guy. Among Dieter’s five new friends, Duane, calm and shaggy, and Gene, stoned and semi-antagonist.

The plotting and planning for escape unfolds, and Dieter shows the inmates just how to make do with what little they have, starting with stealing and using the single nail in the entire prison complex to pick their handcuffs at night. You will have to cue edge-of-seat position again as a certain tight deadline forces them to act fast. And while it is painful to watch in a humanitarian sense, the breakout involves one of the best spontaneous machine-gun shooting scenes in cinema in recent years.

Breaking loose isn’t the end of it. This is the deep jungle in Laos. The next piece of friendly civilization is in Thailand. Dieter embarks on Step 3 of his hard travels, surviving in the wild, which is as much as a challenge as running and hiding and being a prisoner, and by now, sanity is wearing thin.

Christian Bale is the good man for this role. He has the correct expression–it’s confident but not over-zealous. He’s scared, but not a complete wimp. And when he moans or screams, his voice’s sound wave seems to balance on a metaphorical tuning arch, leaning one way before trying to stay balanced and leaning the other way, giving this unsure position of why he is really screaming or moaning. You have to like that in this man. Traits like these ring out within ourselves. He is a hero who could possibly be defeated. Watching this, you know the movie is about a hero who just happened to win.

Rescue Dawn is an adaptation of Herzog’s earlier documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly