Rescue Dawn: A Family Member’s Critique
The movie Rescue Dawn will begin showing at select theaters in New York and Los Angeles on July 4 with national distribution on July 13. Its director is Werner Herzog, who is a master at taking nonfictional truthful scenarios and twisting them into fiction, Hollywood style. Such is the case in Rescue Dawn, which is littered with Herzog’s errors of both omission and commission.
The movie is vaguely based on the book, “Escape From Laos,” written by Dieter Dengler. However, the movie takes liberties that are offensive to anyone who is familiar with the events surrounding the prison break from Ban Houei Het Pathet Lao Prison in June of 1966. These liberties may be the stock and trade of Hollywood, but they are an insult to the brave POWs and their families.
To support these statements, we can provide considerable documentation. We base our condemnation on testimony given to the Central Intelligence Agency by Dieter Dengler and Pisidhi Indradat, who currently resides in Bangkok, Thailand, and is the last remaining successful participant of that prison break. We also have their personal writings, records, videotaped interviews, and information that has never been released to the public.
This documentation by the POWs who survived the ordeal paints a very different mosaic about events of that prison break and the role of Dieter Dengler as portrayed in Rescue Dawn. We want to be clear that we were friends of Dieter Dengler. We have warm memories of our friend Dieter, who recently passed away of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease. We believe Dieter would be appalled by this movie had he lived to see it.
Rescue Dawn is a flawed movie filled with numerous omissions.
Think for a moment, what kind of movie director/writer portrays a character in a movie, yet refuses to talk with that person before, during, or after the production? Pisidhi Indradat and Jerry DeBruin made multiple attempts to contact director Werner Herzog, producer Harry Knapp, and Gibraltar Films, to insure the accurate portrayal of the characters, but to no avail. No response ever surfaced. Maybe the answer is the obvious one: Herzog didn’t want to do an honest movie. He wanted to make his film his way and the facts be damned.
The truth matters and the truth is Herzog made a dishonest film and only succeeded in hurting a POW and a Midwestern farm family that has suffered enough.
Jerry DeBruin, Brother of Gene DeBruin
jdebrui@utnet.utoledo.edu
Stevan Smith – Documentary Producer – Vietnam War Veteran
stevansmith@juno.com
Fred Rohrbach – Vietnam War Veteran
pollynfred@comcast.net
Pisidhi Indradat – Thai escapee and returnee from Pathet Lao Prisons
Malcolm Creelman – Vietnam War Veteran
The movie Rescue Dawn will begin showing at select theaters in New York and Los Angeles on July 4 with national distribution on July 13. Its director is Werner Herzog, who is a master at taking nonfictional truthful scenarios and twisting them into fiction, Hollywood style. Such is the case in Rescue Dawn, which is littered with Herzog’s errors of both omission and commission.
The movie is vaguely based on the book, “Escape From Laos,” written by Dieter Dengler. However, the movie takes liberties that are offensive to anyone who is familiar with the events surrounding the prison break from Ban Houei Het Pathet Lao Prison in June of 1966. These liberties may be the stock and trade of Hollywood, but they are an insult to the brave POWs and their families.
To support these statements, we can provide considerable documentation. We base our condemnation on testimony given to the Central Intelligence Agency by Dieter Dengler and Pisidhi Indradat, who currently resides in Bangkok, Thailand, and is the last remaining successful participant of that prison break. We also have their personal writings, records, videotaped interviews, and information that has never been released to the public.
This documentation by the POWs who survived the ordeal paints a very different mosaic about events of that prison break and the role of Dieter Dengler as portrayed in Rescue Dawn. We want to be clear that we were friends of Dieter Dengler. We have warm memories of our friend Dieter, who recently passed away of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease. We believe Dieter would be appalled by this movie had he lived to see it.
Rescue Dawn is a flawed movie filled with numerous omissions.
Think for a moment, what kind of movie director/writer portrays a character in a movie, yet refuses to talk with that person before, during, or after the production? Pisidhi Indradat and Jerry DeBruin made multiple attempts to contact director Werner Herzog, producer Harry Knapp, and Gibraltar Films, to insure the accurate portrayal of the characters, but to no avail. No response ever surfaced. Maybe the answer is the obvious one: Herzog didn’t want to do an honest movie. He wanted to make his film his way and the facts be damned.
The truth matters and the truth is Herzog made a dishonest film and only succeeded in hurting a POW and a Midwestern farm family that has suffered enough.
Jerry DeBruin, Brother of Gene DeBruin
jdebrui@utnet.utoledo.edu
Stevan Smith – Documentary Producer – Vietnam War Veteran
stevansmith@juno.com
Fred Rohrbach – Vietnam War Veteran
pollynfred@comcast.net
Pisidhi Indradat – Thai escapee and returnee from Pathet Lao Prisons
Malcolm Creelman – Vietnam War Veteran
