AllMovie

More than a tribute to a naval hero, Little Dieter Needs to Fly is an existential biography about one man's dream to become a pilot and how that leads to the unfathomably horrific trial he endures after being shot down and escaping a POW camp in Vietnam. Dieter Dengler's journey through the jungle, battling starvation and the killing of his friend Duane, is engagingly retold as Dengler returns to Vietnam and retraces his steps. The nuances of his emotional journey are open to interpretation. Werner Herzog is notorious for using documentaries to advance his own ideas concerning man and nature in extreme circumstances and Dengler's impassive military bearing makes for a tantalizingly blank slate. However, Herzog is extremely respectful of his subject, and if it is occasionally peppered with Herzog's overdone narrative ruminations, the documentary is careful not to project too much on Dengler's interior life and ends with a fittingly regal yet enigmatic salute to the pilot. In 2006, Herzog completed a fictionalized version of this documentary titled Rescue Dawn starring Christian Bale as Dengler and Steve Zahn as Duane.