Werner Herzog's handcrafted studio film, light on special effects, shot on location in the suffocating jungles of Thailand, immersed in palpable physicality, a true-life POW survival tale that formed the basis of the filmmaker's ten-years-earlier documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about a Navy pilot downed in Laos on the eve of the Vietnam War. The real man, fascinating though he and his story were, was not a good storyteller, and Herzog improves the telling in dramatic re-enactment: conventional for a Herzog film (ending in literal uplift and trite triumphant freeze-frame) but unconventional for a Hollywood film (littered with the kind of detail you can't make up). With Christian Bale (thin), Steve Zahn (thinner), and Jeremy Davies (thinnest). (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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