(Originally written July 11, 2008)

A man named Dieter Dengler tells his story to the camera. This does not sound like the recipe for an engrossing documentary, but Dieter is a charismatic personality with an engrossing tale of survival during war. Werner Herzog’s direction is subtle, relying on the subject himself to tell the story of his dreams of flying planes and his being shot down over Laos in the Vietnam War. Dieter spends much of the movie retracing his steps in Laos as a prisoner of war, reliving the past. There are no graphically violent images, but the descriptions of the conditions and the tortures as a prisoner relayed by Dieter are stunning. This movie, without being graphic or sentimental, conveys much about the horrors of war and at the same time shows the power of ambition.