Dog Day Afternoon | | Cast : | Al Pacino, John Cazale | | Director : | Sidney Lumet | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | September 21, 1975 | | DVD Released Date : | June 04, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | Great Great Movie | Content
 | Al Pacino is one of my favorite actors and he gives an inspired performance in an extremely strange true story of a bank robbery. He plays Sonny who decides to rob a bank with the help of his somewhat half-witted friend Sal, played by John Cazale, another great actor from The Godfather (in fact they are the same pair that had the famous interaction in that movie: "I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart... Fredo, you're nothing to me now. You're not a brother, you're not a friend..."). The reason for the heist is to get money for a sex change for Sonny's homosexual "wife" (he also has a female wife and two kids). At first, it seems to have been quite a misguided idea, as they are soon found by police, but then Sonny gets an idea: he will use the hostages to get whatever he wants, to try to get himself out of the country on a jet. The scene of the crime turns into something of a circus. Huge crowds gather outside and cheer every time Sonny comes out to talk with the cops and the media is having a heyday with the story.
The movie is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. It is a story that could not have been thought up. The direction of Sidney Lumet is amazing. The movie is at times quite hilarious as the story becomes more and more fantastic, but the end takes somewhat of a tragic turn. Highly recommended. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 02, 2005 | | Summary | Beckett in New York! | Content
| From the first time I watched this movie, came to my mind the absurd theater, so well expressed in the middle of the thirties when some part of the rationality in the world had just taken a rest that endured almost eighty years. The decision to steal a bank without any prevision state, where the Kafka desperation, the Sartre anxiety and the Camus ontological loneliness, shook hands. The reflected microcosms showed a city in serious mental, existentialist and spiritual wounds originated for so many failures. Vietnam and its circumstances, Watergate, the ideological sons of Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, the nostalgic gaze of Kerouac and Ginsherg, and the oil crisis of 1973 became a true cresol that determined many living crossroads.
Lumet decided to film a portrait of the most profound loneliness between a male couple. But this mistake thriller is a metaphor of the whole mess in those difficult years all over the world. The terrorism played pitifully a first rate role: the Munich affair in 1972, The Symbiotic Liberation Army, the racial conflicts in South Africa, the increasing migration to Europe, the intestine conflicts in the far East, and the spouted insurrectional Governments based on Marxist currents in Center and South America, conformed such collective tension state that practically there was not any little corner in the world free of problem.
That's why the claustrophobic environment that surrounds the whole film from start to finish. And forget the typical happy ending. If there was a decade in which USA reflected the crude reality in all its implacable and fierce nakedness was in the Seventies.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 08, 2005 | | Summary | Wonderful movie; extraordinary performances all around | Content
| "Dog Day Afternoon," an extraordinary movie in its own right, is made even more extraordinary because all of it was true. This is a movie based primarily on character study, more so than the simple plot.
Here's the basic premise: two men set out to rob a bank, for reasons that become clear later in the film. Sonny (Al Pacino, in his best performance to date, imo) is the mastermind of the heist, while Sal (John Cazale, equally brilliant) is the brooding follower. However, the heist goes drastically wrong, and suddenly cops, TV cameras, and crowds surround the bank, and it turns into a circus. It's a fascinating account of the seduction of celebrity, as evidenced by Sonny, the bank tellers (who want to remain inside the bank and give interviews instead of being saved), and, in a nice touch, the pizza man (who, after delivering the pizza while surrounded by the TV cameras, shouts, "I'm a f***ing star!!")
Frank Pierson wrote his Oscar-winning (well-deserved) screenplay around only twelve scenes, and the movie is 124 minutes, so it's pretty obvious from the get-go that the plot, even one as intriguing as this one, can't support this movie on its own. This is where the acting comes in. Al Pacino is wonderful wonderful wonderful as Sonny. He is adorable in his dorkiness, and gets the nervous face tics, shuffle in his steps, and the wonderful boyish, insecure voice down pat. Pacino's Sonny is fresh-faced and enormously likable, even as he is robbing the bank (although I think that Pacino naturally exudes this charm and likeability, even when he's playing less-than-perfect characters). I've seen most of Pacino's films, and I consider this to be his best performance to date, even better than his amazing performance as Michael Corleone in the "Godfather" movies (and that's saying something, because I adore Michael Corleone). It's definitely an Oscar-caliber performance, and he should have won it that year. John Cazale is just as good as the brooding, reserved Sal, who is the perfect counterbalance to Pacino's screaming, wide-eyed, excitable Sonny. Chris Sarandon (Oscar-nominated) is also very good as Leon, Sonny's lover and male "wife". A very strong supporting cast makes the film even more enjoyable.
I said Pierson's Oscar for his screenplay was well-deserved because of the witty dialogue and extremely well thought-out, bitingly funny, and compassionate scenes. Take, for example, the very memorable scene where Sonny tell police captain Moretti, "Kiss me. When I'm being f***ed, I like to get kissed a lot" before shouting, "Attica! Attica! Put those f***ing guns down!" at the police, and wins the crowd's support. The scene is pure adrenaline, and one of the most thrilling and exciting scenes I've ever witnessed on screen. The best scenes in the movie are Sonny's two telephone conversations, one with his male wife Leon and the other with his female wife Angie. Director Sidney Lumet claims that Pacino and Sarandon improvised most of their telephone conversation, which is a testament to the skills of both actors, as that telephone conversation is simultaneously funny ("Algeria? Why are you going to Algeria? There's crazy people who wear things on their heads") and very poignant ("You're warped, you know that?" "I'm warped, I'm warped, I know it"). Sonny's conversation with his wife Angie is just as good, with Pacino getting a chance to let out his trademark volcanic-ash tirade on her: "Will you shut the f*** up and listen to me! Just listen to me!"
These wonderful scenes work v. well together, capturing all the madness, poignancy, and compassion of the events. It's a very well-made movie; the director knows the movie is a superb character-study and wisely sticks to just that, his characters. One of my favorite movies, and a definite must-have for any DVD collection. 5/5 |
| Rating | | | Date | April 04, 2005 | | Summary | Attica! | Content
| This classic 1975 thriller, based on a real life 1972 bank robbery captivates you nearly enough to make you feel like you've been there before. Al Pacino delivers a great performance as a transvestite looking to raise money for his lover[Chris Sarandon]'s sex change operation. But what could have been a short, easy situation for the robbers, turns into a standoff. This film is not violent, but it makes a strong point. The performances are mesmerizing, and the fact that this really happened in modern America adds to the film's punch. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 21, 2005 | | Summary | This movie will be lost on the younger crowd (including me) | Content
| I love Al Pacino. He's a dynamite actor and I'll never, ever be able to say anything bad about HIM, but I don't know about this movie. I agree that it's not really a comedy. I can't really put my finger in what it was, but this movie seemed to be missing something for me. Something about it didn't really click with me, and I think a small part of that is due to he fact that I'm not over 30. One of the seemingly important aspects of the movie (the Attica stuff) was completely lost on me. And while I love some of the absurdity of the movie, at the end, I was less than impressed. I think part of that is because despite Al Pacino's dynamite (as usual) performance, he alone wasn't enough to make up for every other aspect of the movie, which seemed a bit weak. |
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