"Rescue Dawn" is a thrilling movie, an old-fashioned tale of survival that may be the closest Werner Herzog has come to fashioning his obsession with the struggle between man and nature into a mainstream film. Christian Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, an eccentric Vietnam-era Navy pilot whose first allegiance is to flying, his country second (and mainly because the U.S gave him a chance to fly). After crashing in Laos, he is captured and sent to a P.O.W. camp; it's there that little Dieter steels himself into a man determined to escape and navigate the treacherous jungle to freedom. Bale and Steve Zahn (as a P.O.W.) give remarkable performances, and Herzog creates an air of beauty and peril in the jungle. "Rescue Dawn" (a narrative treatment of Herzog's documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly") is another triumph for the great German director.