#70: DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

10

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, many times

BEST SEQUENCE

The whole movie is great from start to finish, but the opening 20 minutes are pretty memorable, showing the initial bank robbery attempt and how quickly every single thing goes wrong. I also liked every scene between Al Pacino and Charles Durning

BEST LINE

"ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

96%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Framed by great work from director Sidney Lumet and fueled by a gripping performance from Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon offers a finely detailed snapshot of people in crisis with tension-soaked drama shaded in black humor."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does."

DIRECTOR

Sidney Lumet

MAIN CAST

Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning

THOUGHTS

• This is the second Sidney Lumet movie I've reviewed. When I talked about 12 Angry Men, I wondered if I was goosing my thrill score because it's an undeniably great movie, while not perhaps as thrilling as some others. At times I wondered the same for Dog Day Afternoon, but I'm going for it. This is a tense, gripping, unpredictable movie, with amazing and realistic performances, especially from Pacino, and the fact that it's based on a true story just ties everything up in a bow. This is definitely one of my favourites, and despite having seen it many times before, I was completely engrossed once again
• I don't entirely agree with the IMDB synopsis, since "bizarre nightmare" makes this sound like a stranger movie than it is. It's really quite grounded; the plot follows a logical sequence of events, and the actions of the characters make sense
• I think it was an interesting (and good) choice to make nearly every character likeable to some extent. The would-be bank robbers, the bank employees, the bank manager, even Charles Durning as the main cop in charge. It comes across that Durning's Sergeant Moretti sees the situation they're in as the real problem to deal with, as opposed to the bank robbers themselves. Even the FBI agents who eventually take control of the situation aren't outwardly antagonistic, they're more just pragmatic with a job to do
• For a movie that came out in 1975, I feel like it's ahead of its time in a couple of noteworthy ways. Firstly, it has a distinctly anti-cop stance. Aside from Charles Durning, the police officers who surround the bank seem to be pretty trigger happy. The real-life events which inspired this movie happened shortly after the Attica Prison Riot of 1971, in which 43 people were killed, mostly by law enforcement gunfire. Al Pacino's Sonny uses this as a taunt and as a rallying cry when he sees the cops reaching for their guns, shouting "ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!" and, in the process, getting the crowd of spectators on his side
• Secondly, the movie's depiction of gay, bi and trans characters is honest and sympathetic. While the real-life Sonny, John Wojtowicz, stated that the movie was only 30% accurate to the real events, he did say that Pacino's characterization of himself and Chris Sarandon's performance as his partner were accurate to real life
• Although, one notable thing that changed from real life to movie, for obvious reasons: in real life the robbery was initiated with a ransom note that read, "This is an offer you can't refuse." Considering the bank robbers were played by Al Pacino and John Cazale, who had previously appeared in The Godfather, the source of this quote, it would have been kind of hilarious if they'd kept it in the movie
• In his own quiet way, John Cazale makes a fair impact on the AFI list, appearing in three movies that we'll talk about, more than even Pacino, at two. Cazale will also be appearing in The Deer Hunter and the aforementioned The Godfather. The actor died relatively young from lung cancer at 42, but every single movie he was in was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar - this one, The Godfather I and II, The Deer Hunter, and The Conversation. Dog Day Afternoon lost the Oscar to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but it was in good company with a fellow nominee we'll be talking about much later, a thrilling little film called Jaws
• The events of the movie take place on a hot afternoon in August, and you can almost feel the heat and the humidity. I said something similar about Body Heat a while ago, and it also brought to mind Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, another movie with a very strong message about police brutality
• Finally, I've decided that I'm going to start including the director and the main cast for each movie, because really there's no reason not to, and in fact I should have been doing this from the beginning. Moving forward, they shall be included!

Up next: Our second Western, The Wild Bunch. We'll see how it compares to The Magnificent Seven