Dog Day Afternoon

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Runtime: 125 minutes

Directed by: Sidney Lumet

Starring: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Penelope Allen

From: Warner Bros.

This reminded me that I should do a deeper dive on Elton John's back catalog... not to mention Sidney Lumet's filmography. Concerning the former, that is because I mainly only know his big hits (which I like) and the movie's opening credits scene is set to his song Amorenna, from the 1970 album Tumbleweed Connection-and it's a quality tune. It sets the mood as various images from New York City are shown. From there, it's a story which I would say was on the preposterous side—except that it's based on actual events.

While of course the leads are painted in a more sympathetic light than in real life, John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile did attempt in 1972 to rob a Chase Manhattan bank in Brooklyn only for it to go awry, a hostage situation developed, and both the hostages & the crowd outside actually take the side of the robbers. There's also the LGBTQ+ factor in that John's lover was trans and identified as female but the cash was to go to her gender reassignment surgery. Thankfully this movie handled that aspect in a mostly tasteful and not offensive manner. The negative opinions heard about their sexual proclivities were sadly typical of those less-enlightened times. Of course such a wild tale would be the basis for a motion picture adaptation.

It was no surprise to me that Dog Day Afternoon was a great movie. The director being a legend and the leads being Al Pacino & John Cazale goes a long way but so does a story which is multi-layered and in part is about the fiasco that was the media attention surrounding the hostage crises. The rest of the cast were solid themselves, whether they be familiar to me (like Charles Durning and Chris Sarandon) or off-Broadway actors that Pacino knew from his days before he went to Hollywood. It's one hell of an intelligent story filled with interesting characters and was the sort of serious thought-provoking cinema you could only get from Hollywood in the 70's. This was 2 hours of intensity, a journey that at first had chuckles as the robbery attempt went bad due to their ineptitude... before gradually turning into something far more sobering.

It is one of the best movies from a great director and is the sort of motion picture I can recommend to anyone/everyone here.