I don’t think I quite get Christian Bale. Sure, he’s dependable, and committed, and chiseled. But he just doesn’t seem desperately interesting. Whether donning the black mask and fighting crime or starving himself to death, whether hacking women to bits or fleeing a VietCong internment camp, he always seems a little detached, occasionally flashing into life before relapsing into a strange, robotic state. Perhaps it’s just that he’s too private, we know fairly little about him. Or perhaps he just lacks personality. Either way, I find it very hard to get excited about watching him onscreen, and he’s yet to play a character I can really relate to, though Dieter Dengler comes close.
But that said, Rescue Dawn is still one of the year’s most straightforwardly enjoyable pictures, a no-frills account of imprisonment, escape and redemption set against a beautifully photographed jungle landscape. Continuing many of Herzog’s best loved themes- obsession and willfulness, men alone against nature- the film tells an extraordinary true story in stark, unembellished but always riveting style.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:09 AM | Comments (1)
What about The Prestige?
As far as this goes, all your comments about the actor could apply to the film and vice versa.
Ben Weeks
1 January 2008
7:08 PM