Christian Bale did great as always, although seemed a little confused at times as to what accent he was meant to be using and Steve Zahn did a fine job of dropping the zaniness from his usual sidekick role. The family of one of Dengler's fellow prisoners (played by an emaciated-looking Jeremy Davies still doing a bit of his dead-on Charlie Manson impression from the television movie) have contested his representation in the film, even citing evidence from Dengler himself to prove some events in the movie wrong. It's interesting, because I can see why Herzog would twist events to ramp up the drama, but I could also imagine Dengler giving Herzog a truer version of the events and the families of his fellow prisoners a softer one. I suspect Herzog will remain enigmatic on that particular subject.
