After seeing Al Pacino at the 2024 Academy Awards, I was inspired to finally watch Dog Day Afternoon. While I certainly saw an iconic acting performance and just an overall gritty feel in this unique flick, I also feel that for a first-time viewer it plays a bit better in its 1975 era than today.
For a very basic overview, Dog Day Afternoon tells the based-on-true-events story of Sonny (Pacino), a bank robber who has everything go wrong with his operation right from the start. His partner Sal (John Cazale) is a loose cannon, he almost sets the building on fire, and his nerves do not exactly strike fear in the hearts of his hostages. But as the situation progresses, director Sidney Lumet begins peeling back the layers of the onion that is Sonny and making him an "empathetic criminal" with the outside support of thousands.
There are some unforgettable cinema moments in Dog Day Afternoon, to be sure. Pacino gives an inspired performance, the "Attica! Attica!" scene is one of the most quotable movie lines ever, and Lumet impressively imbues the film with a hot, claustrophobic, gritty-1970s-New-York-City feel.
I can completely understand how and why 1970s viewers view this as an all-time classic. The themes of identifying emotionally with the "bad guy", pushing back against police presence/authority, and the different sexual orientations portrayed within would all have been relatively ahead of their times (especially at the cinema) in 1975. Combine that with the story being ripped from news headlines and filmed on-location in downtown Brooklyn and it is truly "1970s culture personified".
Does that all carry over into a first-time 2024 viewing? Not necessarily. Pacino's performance largely does, but the themes that were startling to 1970s moviegoers are more commonplace and less-controversial today. For a film that relies so much on emotional identification with the multi-faceted protagonist, this can be a bit of a problem from a modern lens.
Overall, though, I enjoyed Dog Day Afternoon and can understand its place in cinematic legacy. It brilliantly captures a moment in time & culture even if some of that luster may fade the further away we get from it.
For a very basic overview, Dog Day Afternoon tells the based-on-true-events story of Sonny (Pacino), a bank robber who has everything go wrong with his operation right from the start. His partner Sal (John Cazale) is a loose cannon, he almost sets the building on fire, and his nerves do not exactly strike fear in the hearts of his hostages. But as the situation progresses, director Sidney Lumet begins peeling back the layers of the onion that is Sonny and making him an "empathetic criminal" with the outside support of thousands.
There are some unforgettable cinema moments in Dog Day Afternoon, to be sure. Pacino gives an inspired performance, the "Attica! Attica!" scene is one of the most quotable movie lines ever, and Lumet impressively imbues the film with a hot, claustrophobic, gritty-1970s-New-York-City feel.
I can completely understand how and why 1970s viewers view this as an all-time classic. The themes of identifying emotionally with the "bad guy", pushing back against police presence/authority, and the different sexual orientations portrayed within would all have been relatively ahead of their times (especially at the cinema) in 1975. Combine that with the story being ripped from news headlines and filmed on-location in downtown Brooklyn and it is truly "1970s culture personified".
Does that all carry over into a first-time 2024 viewing? Not necessarily. Pacino's performance largely does, but the themes that were startling to 1970s moviegoers are more commonplace and less-controversial today. For a film that relies so much on emotional identification with the multi-faceted protagonist, this can be a bit of a problem from a modern lens.
Overall, though, I enjoyed Dog Day Afternoon and can understand its place in cinematic legacy. It brilliantly captures a moment in time & culture even if some of that luster may fade the further away we get from it.