Plot
Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a German-born U.S. Navy pilot in squadron VA-145, is shot down in his A-1 Skyraider over Laos in February 1966, while on a combat mission. He survives the crash only to be pursued, and ultimately captured, by the Pathet Lao. Dengler is given the chance for leniency by the Province Governor (François Chau) if he signs a document condemning America, but he refuses. He is tortured and taken to a prison camp. There he meets fellow American military soldiers and pilots, such as Gene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies) and Duane W. Martin (Steve Zahn), some of whom have been captive for years. Dengler begins planning an escape, much to the disbelief of his fellow combatants, who have been downtrodden through physical and psychological torture by the camp guards.
Eventually, all the prisoners agree to escape, only Dengler and Martin follow through with the plan as the others disappear and are not seen again in the film. Dengler and Martin try to reach the Mekong River to cross over into Thailand, but Martin is killed by a mob of angry villagers. Eventually, Dengler is rescued by an American helicopter but sequestered in a hospital due to the secret nature of his mission. He is visited by some of his squadron who covertly take him back to his ship, where he is welcomed as a hero by the crew.
Read more about this topic: Rescue Dawn
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)