Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

AFTER stunning documentaries The White Diamond and Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog returns to feature film with Rescue Dawn. Rescue Dawn fictionalises the story of pilot Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), whose real-life story Herzog previously documented in Little Dieter Needs to Fly.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

JAVIER BARDEM is a Mexican sent from the future in this vicious, tactile masterpiece of the Southwest, a film about doomed opportunism and its ceaseless hunter whose only conception of mercy is the flip of a coin. Bardem’s breezy Hispanic locks frame eyes of unforgivable blackness, and there hasn’t been an assassin this callous or unrelenting since The Terminator. Like a cyborg programmed to kill, his circuitry is exacting, near-infallible, and ruthlessly precise. Similarly, Joel and Ethan Coen direct with seasoned accuracy and efficiency, their filmmaking marksmanship now a sight to behold after so many good, but never quite great collaborations. Shot with devastating rhythm and uncharacteristic simplicity, the film is formally, a marvel, yet also the Brothers’ least showy and most nihilistic feature to date – humourless as a counterpart to Bardem’s grim reaper, unremittingly bleak as an itinerary of death’s pursuit.