Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Steineded How sad is this?

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Tom Rochester During the second world war Dieter Dengler was a young boy living in Germany. He was inspired then to one day fly like the pilots he could see from his bedroom window. As an adult he left home and followed his dream, training in the U.S. air force. Soon after in 1966, Dieter was shot down over Laos flying his first ever mission. He was tortured and starved extensively by his captors as were other U.S. prisoners at the same camp. Miraculously, Dieter not only survived the starvation but he eventually escaped barefoot and was later rescued.This is Dieters story and Little Dieter needs to fly is the documentary. Here we see Dieter in conversation, in interview, at home and at play, but he is also taken back into the Laotian jungle to relive and reenact his capture. This really helps to illustrate not only his own war stories but also Herzog's own story about Dieter, as Dieter is deeply disturbed by the experience. These stories are told within the context of Dieters whole life and you really get to know him by the end. I think due to his improvising and adventurous nature each Herzog film is very much unique. The pacing, the edit and his relationship with his subject is always changing. By the films conclusion I must admit I was all choked up, it's an extraordinary story and a really fine film that will be watched for years to come.

bob the moo Dieter Dengler always wanted to fly planes – it was his childhood dream and an adult reality. This film spends time with him and traces his history from birth in Germany shortly before the war, his journey to America and specifically his time in Vietnam. Dengler returns to the jungle where his plane came down in 1966 and recalls his time as a prisoner of the Vietcong before his eventual escape.Although I have not always enjoyed every Herzog film I have seen but I have always found them interesting for one reason or another and thus I found myself watching this knowing nothing more than the fact that it was a Herzog film. Opening with the background to Dengler, the film soon moves into the recreation of his experiences in Vietnam and it is here that the background pays off. On one hand , the story is undeniably gripping and horrifying but of greater interest was the man himself and specifically how does he manage to deal with the things he has lived through? Herzog sits closely with Dengler and lets him talk, exposing his character as much as possible.Other reviewers have said that Herzog is hardly in the film but I agree with Terry Nienhius when he points out that Herzog is actually all over the film. He sits back and lets us focus on the subject but his work is all over the music and use of footage – it is really well done and produces a reflective mood that compliments the story and character. A good film but not one that can easily watched while doing something else as it requires attention. It is powerful and harrowing but yet confusing it its character complexity. It doesn't have all the answers of course but it is fascinating as a study of "Little Dieter".

Howard Schumann "I'm not a hero. Only people who are dead are heroes." - Dieter DenglerLittle Dieter Needs to Fly, a 1997 documentary by Werner Herzog of the life of Vietnam war-hero Dieter Dengler, begins with a quotation from the Book of Revelations: "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." As the film starts, Dieter walks into a tattoo shop in San Francisco and looks at a painting of Death in a fiery, horse-drawn chariot. "Death didn't want me," he says, referring to his survival after six months in a Viet Cong prison camp. Herzog documents Dengler's life from his childhood in Wildburg in the Black Forest region of Germany to his escape and rescue from Laos. Growing up in Germany during World War II, Dengler listened to the constant sound of Allied planes overhead and dreamed of becoming a pilot. "As a child," Herzog says in voice-over, "Dieter saw things that made no earthly sense at all. Germany had been transformed into a dreamscape of the surreal." Dieter came to the United States when he was only 18, joined the Navy and was trained to become a pilot. He moved to California and was sent to Vietnam in 1966. "It all looked strange", Dieter says, "like a distant barbaric dream". On his first mission as a pilot, Dieter was shot down and captured by the Pathet Lao, then later turned over to the Viet Cong. He remained a prisoner in Laos for six months.Told through archival footage, dream sequences, recreations in actual jungle locations, exotic music, and surreal imagery, the film is divided into four chapters, each representing a period from Dengler's life. Like a Greek tragedy, Herzog has named the sequences: The Man, His Dream, Punishment, and Redemption. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is not a linear documentary, but a very personal and poetic film, similar in a way to Agnes Varda's documentary essay, "The Gleaners and I". Having long been fascinated with the experience of men in jungles (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo) and having himself grown up in Germany during the war, Herzog provides a voice-over commentary that is as much about himself as it is about Dieter Dengler. Dieter tells his gruesome tale in a strangely chatty, matter-of-fact manner without anger or bitterness, almost nonchalantly recounting mind-numbing details of his captivity and torture. He does not try to place the events in a historical or political context or to comment on the rights and wrongs of the war, but provides a strictly personal account of his survival against overwhelming odds. Footage of both bombed out German cities in World War II and bombs lighting up the dense foliage over the Vietnam jungle make the experience very vivid. Dvorak and Bach, Tibetan throat singing, and native African chants are brilliantly interspersed to add depth and beauty to the experience. A chant from Madagascar, "Oay Lahy E", sung while Dieter walks through a sea of fighter planes, adds a final transcendent touch. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is an unforgettable film that moves beyond the limitations of the genre to become a moving testament to both the absurdity of war and the resilience of the human spirit. NOTE: Be sure to watch past the end credits. There is a postscript on the DVD that truly completes the experience.

stephenksmith Werner Herzog again explores the psyche of a man. In "Little Dieter...", we meet an effervescent, brilliant man who survived the war in Bavaria seeing starvation and strange sights, moved to the U.S. and fulfilled his dream of being a flier. War, food, death, survival, hoarding, planes, heads coming off... how one American is born. Herzog again sees madness as plane of existence and the surreal blends with the poignant as Herzog himself narratives this psychic travelogue of a German becoming an American who flies prop planes in a late 20th century war where the culmination of technology, pilgrimage and eating out of garbage cans with spoons is melded with constant optimism into a man redefined into American. As always with Herzog we are faced with florid madness, brilliance and what is man in the face of his own excesses, societal and personal. We laugh and cringe and are amazed at this man. Where else for this man but America?