It breaks my heart to pass this along, but a guy in the business who knows other people is telling me that Werner Herzog‘s Rescue Dawn has been seen and that the word isn’t very good. I’m mincing words — he says it’s pretty damn bad. Obviously this is just one observer writing what he’s writing, but he claims he’s expressing some kind of general consensus. I can only cling to a hope that this is cynical distributor talk and that the guy just isn’t seeing it.
“I’m a huge Herzog fan, but this one is really terrible,” he wrote earlier today. “People behind the scenes are just stunned. Companies are looking at it out of courtesy and respect for the man — but this movie is a joke. There’s nothing right about it — everything from Christian Bale‘s performance to horrible editing, structure and pacing. There’s no drama. The action scenes are ludicrous…flat. A few here tried to defend it while watching it, but no one could make it to the end without finally admitting it was a total trainwreck .
“I don’t know if you’ve seen a copy yourself, but I’ve noticed heavy coverage on your site and wanted to give heads up. It’s worse than straight-to-video. Now if they shot a behind-the-scenes documentary (as you know, the shoot was a fiscal and political catastrophe) well, they might have something to salvage.
“The film has been seen by others, and it sounds as if everyone feels the same. Rescue Dawn will be hard-pressed to find a large U.S. distributor. The cat will be out of the bag soon enough, even without the Toronto screenings. The post-production nightmare is even worse than reported. Herzog has yet to be paid, and there’s all sorts of finger-pointing over unresolvable issues with the film.”