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"Rescue Dawn" is one of the year's best films because it's a senses-rattling experience and because Christian Bale is a fantastic movie star.

Moviegoers looking to be entertained should see something else. There's no fun to be had here.

"Rescue Dawn" isn't boring for a second, and the violence doesn't push past PG-13. Yet it's gut-wrenching. Scenes labor, oozing hopelessness. The characters suffer through the thirst and starvation and torturous situations only the worst men should ever know.

Director Werner Herzog's quiet, straightforward style makes you feel what's happening on the screen. His film is like "Saving Private Ryan" without the battle scenes, or a scaled-down "The Pianist."

Bale plays real-life Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, who was shot down over Laos at the start of the Vietnam War. Dengler was captured, tortured and held in a Viet Cong POW camp, where he staged a dramatic escape.

The guards were cruel. The heat was excruciating. Every hour of every day was miserable, with no end in sight. But Dengler's most daunting challenge came once he finally got outside the prison's walls. The dense, lush jungle is infinitely more ruthless than any communist soldiers. It marches Dengler and his companion Duane (Steve Zahn) to the brink of despair.

Then things get worse.

Sounds super, right? "Rescue Dawn" is the opposite of a chick flick, and there's very little action. But fans with an appreciation of film as art won't want to miss it, because Herzog somehow strikes at every emotion without flexing.

There's no "style" to Herzog's direction. There isn't even much music. When a main character is brutally murdered with an ax, we hear a sudden sound of metal on flesh and then glimpse his lifeless body. There's no gore, no screaming. Somehow, this makes it sting more.

And Bale is definitely one of our finest actors. When Oscar time rolls around, he's going to deserve heavy consideration for this performance. Dengler has strong resolve, never letting himself be overwhelmed by his ever-more-dire plight. But his body is changed as the film wears on. He becomes gangly and beaten. His face and feet are covered in sores. His movements become agonized, and he very slowly starts to lose his mind.

Bale's brilliant in the role, but when is he not? He made a psycho killer lovable and teamed with director Mike Nolan to turn Batman from a costume-clad goofball into the Dark Knight. He finds the perfect note for each performance and then never lets it slip. ("Rescue Dawn" brings to mind what might be his greatest performance — as an anorexic factory worker dying of insomnia in "The Machinist.")

What a daunting task that must have been with his latest. Bale and Herzog have crafted the movie equivalent of nonfiction literature. It will stay with you long after you've left the theater.