Review of Dog Day Afternoon (1975) by Movie G — 23 Mar 2011

Let me get this out right away, Dog Day Afternoon is one of the best movies I have never seen. Why, I don't really know. I'll try my best to explain.

Dog Day Afternoon is the true story of Sonny & Sal, two guys who one day decide to rob a bank. The only problem is they have no idea how to rob a bank and within minutes the entire place is surrounded my cops, media, and protestors. Through the next 2 hours we get to see how I escalates from a few guys in the bank to a full blown media sensation.

It has the bare basics of a plot, but it really is a brilliant social commentary that in my opinion reflects the division of America in the 70s better than any other movie. First of all, all the protestors worship Sonny. For them he's a hero, fighting the man and authority, and doing it in style. Next they all leave when they find out he's gay, only for gay rights protestors to show up and cheer him on, who were previously uninterested. It just shows how the smallest facts could change opinions back then, and how divided America really was.

Sonny himself might be my favourite movie character ever, he's jsut so fascinating. He takes the support of all the crowd, talks it up to the cameras, and gets riots going. Does he actually support the subject, or is he just trying to show off a false confidence to make the cops think he's doing better than he is? I don't know, but wondering is what makes it so great. It also helps that he's played by a never better, I repeat NEVER BETTER, Al Pacino, in what is easily the greatest performance I've ever seen, by anyone, ever! That's a bold statement, but I supprt it all the way. Pacino is just plain amazing. He can be quiet, he can be intense, he can be furious, he can be emotional, he can be everything, and he shows it all off in this movie. He also brings a great amount of sympathy to the role. If it had been anyone else you would just hate him for doing such a crime, but Pacino shows the characters weak side and you can't help but feel bad for him. If you want to see acting at it's finest just watch the scene where he's talking to his "wife" on the phone, and you'll know exactly what I mean or the scene of him in cop car at the end riding to the airport, he doesn't say a word, but just look at his eyes. I could honestly write a 10 page essay on his performance, but I won't bore you with it.

We are also given a healthy dose of supporting actors, most prominently John Cazale. Many of you know John Cazale as Fredo in The Godfather, and in my opinion the most underappreciated actor of the 2 films he appeared in. He plays Sonny's partner Sal, and he's fantastic. He's incredibly paranoid, much like in The Godfather, but here he really shines and him and Pacino together are just pure gold. We also get Charles Durning who does a fantastic job as the sheriff trying to talk Sonny out, Chris Sarandon as Sonny's gay partner, and everybody else involved all put in top notch performances.

Dog Day Afternoon is also helped by one of the best scripts of the 1970s. I've never been to great at explaining why scripts are so great, so just watch it and you'll see what I mean. What I can explain though is the great sense of realism this film portrays. The whole thing was shot on a real New York city block which adds to the realism, as well as the fact that it uses no makeup on the characters, no lighting other than the lights in the building, and uses no music through the entire movie, besieds Elton John's Amoreena (possibly fitting into the pro-gay theme?) in the opening credits. The whole movie also has an incredibly gritty look to it, thanks to that awesome 70s type of film that you see in a lot of those New York movies like The French Connection or Taxi Driver. Sidney Lumet was one of the directors in the 70s who defined this style, along with other movies like Serpico, but I think this is really his masterpiece, and yes, I think it's even better than 12 Angry Men.

Sidney Lumet did an icredibly job altogether with Dog Day Afternoon. From leading such an incredible cast, to executing it's terrific camerawork, to taking jsut a simple idea of a bank heist and making it into something that could reflect society so well, he did wonders with this movie, and it's actually in my opnion the best film of the 1970s. It's just 2 hours and 10 minutes of cinematic perfection.

What's really most surprising about Dog Day Afternoon is that as much as it was themed about the 70s, it's still relevant today, and I would infact say that it's pro-gay themes are even ahead of our time. Still today it's a big issue, and the idea of a gay man becoming a hero is something you still don't see very often. Not until this viewing did I also really pick out its themes of media aswell. It's relevant today how someone can bew the biggest thing in the world for a day, and then be forgotten the next because something else has happened. It makes you forget that in reality, the real Sonny is still out walking amongst us, and he has been since the 80s when he got out of prison. This movie is just too deep. Dog Day Afternoon is a classic of the 1970s that for some reason never became the classic it should have been. I would honestly recommend it to absoltely anyone, and seeing Pacino alone should be worth the price of a rental, and more preferably a buy.