In February 1966, while on a combat mission, Lieutenant Dieter Dengler, a German-born U.S. Navy pilot in squadron VA-145, flying from the carrier USS Ranger, is shot down in his Douglas A-1 Skyraider over Laos.

Dengler is offered leniency by the province governor if he will sign a document condemning America, but he refuses, so he is tortured and taken to a prisoner of war camp.

There, he meets his fellow prisoners, some of whom have been captives for years: American pilots Gene DeBruin and Duane W. Martin, Hong Kong Chinese radio operator Y.C.

Dengler and Martin head towards the Mekong River with a plan to cross over into Thailand by fashioning a crude raft, but they run afoul of rapids and a waterfall.

Rescue Dawn is based on the true story of Dieter Dengler, a charismatic pilot who was shot down in Laos while on a covert attack mission for the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.

The prisoners had overheard the guards in mid-June planning to kill all of them and return to their villages because a drought had caused a severe shortage of food and water.

They winched him on board, but, fearful that he could be a Viet Cong suicide bomber, the pararescue crewman, A1C Michael Leonard from Lawler, Iowa, pinned Dengler to the helicopter floor and searched him.

Compared to Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Rescue Dawn understates the suffering of the prisoners, including omitting some of the worst torture experienced by Dengler, as the film is rated PG-13.

Original songs written by musical artists Ernst Reijseger, Patty Hill, Craig Eastman, and Jack Shaindlin, among others, were also used in the film.

[10] Herzog acknowledged that DeBruin acted heroically during his imprisonment, refusing to leave while some sick prisoners remained, and probably would have written the character differently, but he was unaware of this information until after the film had been completed.

[6] Intharathat and Jerry DeBruin stated that they made multiple attempts to meet with Herzog to ensure the film's accuracy, but without success.

On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 162 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Director Werner Herzog has once again made a compelling tale of man versus nature, and Christian Bale completely immerses himself in the role of fighter pilot (and prisoner of war) Dieter Dengler.

He praised Herzog for his use of "lush jungle locations in Thailand, eloquent camera work and an unobtrusive but powerful music score", which brought to life the "story of a man in the wilderness battling the elements on his own terms".

[19] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Walter Addiego wrote that the film was "an old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie that becomes much more because of writer-director Werner Herzog's admiration for the remarkable true story of its protagonist, Dieter Dengler".

He declared: "War stories don't get much more harrowing or detached than Rescue Dawn, and that's both blessing and curse for the Werner Herzog film.

[23] Equally unimpressed was Paula Nechak of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who called Rescue Dawn "a noble effort that can't quite make itself unique in a saturated genre", adding that Herzog "already has covered much of the tropical terrain of his long-delayed action film in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly".

But seeing Dengler's adventure staged hardly seems more real than hearing his account—although, as conventionally framed and lit as it is, Rescue Dawn is the closest thing to a 'real' movie that Herzog has ever made.

[27] Describing some pitfalls, Elizabeth Weitzman of the NY Daily News said there was "an odd emotional disconnect leading up to the climactic escape, which can be traced directly to the performances".

[29] She believed that "such a masterful depiction of American heroism and can-do spirit has been created by a German art film director known for considerably darker visions of obsession is an irony Herzog no doubt finds delicious",[29] and also emphasized how "There's a sense of austerity underlying Rescue Dawn, all the more admirable for being so rare in Hollywood storytelling.

"[30] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, however, was not moved by the storytelling, writing: "Rescue Dawn is Herzog's first English-language screenplay, and this is part of its problem: The hushed conversations between prisoners sound only fitfully idiomatic.

"[31] On the other hand, critic Leonard Maltin praised the film, which he called a "Gripping reworking of Herzog's 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly", and an "edge-of-your-seat POW story".