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AML Movie Review: “Rescue Dawn” and “Recognizing Your Saints”

// July 29th, 2007 // fun

Nicky will be jealous, but we watched Rescue Dawn on Saturday, a Vietnam War movie with Christian Bale. It got a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, so we figured it would be good, not to mention we’ve heard nothing but rave reviews at every turn.

And it didn’t disappoint. The movie is about a pilot who crashes in Laos during the afore mentioned war, is captured and put into prison camp where he meets others, some of whom have been there for over two years. Bale is very, very good in this, probably taking his experience for these kind of roles from a movie like The Machinist. He was believable and different than you usually see him.

The story itself is intense and hard to watch sometimes, but I thought it was unique and just an amazing tale of survival. 5/5 stars.

The next film we saw was A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints on DVD. It came out last year and stars quite a few people, like Robert Downey Jr., Rosario Dawson and Shia LaBeouf. It is based on the book of the same title, and written and directed by the author of that book, Dito Montiel. It’s about his life growing up Austoria, N.Y. and about how he changed and wrote a book later in life. It’s one of those semi-depressing movies, but it’s also well done and well acted. The way it kind of displays that this is a book being read by the real author, and the integrates the past with the present is pretty cool. 3.5/5 stars.

All in all, a good weekend of movies. We’ll probably be seeing Flags of our Fathers and The Good Shepherd next weekend. I also may sneak out of work early this week and see Sunshine…