"Dog Day Afternoon" isn't a film about what you think it is. On the surface, it is a heist film, about a couple of bank robbers who go in a rob the bank. I've seen the film now multiple times, but only now after watching it recently do I realize that the whole bank robbery takes up about ten minutes of the film. The film opens after a long montage of New York with three men, Sonny (Al Pacino), Sal (John Cazale), and Stevie (Gary Springer). Soon Sonny and Sal show their guns and begin to hold up the bank, Stevie gets cold feet and leaves before anything else happens. For the next few minutes, Sonny and Sal round up the bank employees, and get the money, you think you're watching the climax of a movie when it is actually the beginning. It isn't soon after that the police show up and surround the bank, and soon the film becomes something else entirely.
"Dog Day Afternoon" is one of the great films of the 1970s for many reasons, but it's great in showing the different direction films were going at the time. "Dog Day Afternoon" isn't so much about the bank robbery as it is about the bank robbers. If you deconstruct the plot, you probably wouldn't have enough to last twenty minutes, and you wouldn't have a film as interesting. For all intensive purposes, "Dog Day Afternoon" is a miracle of a movie for the reason that it is great at all, and that all has to do with the direction, writing, and the acting, all which come together to make one entertaining film.
Once the criminals take over the bank, we begin to understand what or who the picture is about. The prominent character is Sonny played by Pacino, we see Sonny isn't much of a criminal, we believe that he's not a bad man, he never hurts the hostages, but he must make the police believe he would. Sonny even comes to care about the hostages and brings them food and when one man is suffering from asthma, he lets them go. The hostages are frightened but from watching the movie, I felt they were never afraid of Sonny but of Sal who does give the impression he's willing to kill anyone.
The robbery soon turns into a media circus, and Sonny is able to turn himself into a celebrity, and even get the public's sympathy. About an hour of the film goes by when we finally see the motive behind the robbery, it turns out Sonny is actually gay, and was stealing money for his lover's sex change operation. I had to stop and ask myself, okay now what kind of a movie am I watching? In fact as I'm writing this, I'm still not convinced the movie is really about anything, but it remains entertaining.
The film was directed by Sydney Lumet, a director who seems to run on all cylinders with a good script and good actors. Here Lumet restricts himself to inside the bank for most of the film, with small periods of outside in the street when Pacino goes out to speak to the cops. Lumet seems to work well in confined areas, just look at his work in "12 Angry Men" made almost 20 years before this. He's able to have his actors live in the space and make them live out the experience. It's probably safe to say Lumet is an actor's director, which is a type of director that may not get as much respect as others. But if you look at the best of Lumet's films, you will see the best performances from the greatest actors. Perhaps I'm biased because I come from an acting background myself, and I do love films that show off great performances, and this film has one of my all time favorites.
Al Pacino was an actor who could not be touched in the 70s, he is my favorite actor of that era, and even today I get the sense that he's as passionate about the craft as he was back then. Listening to Pacino talking about acting is like listening to Scorsese talk about directing, I've never heard it be talked about so passionately. Without taking away anything from actors like John Cazale, Charles Durning, or Chris Sarandon, there a moments in "Dog Day Afternoon" where you feel like you're watching a one man show. What Pacino does with this performance is so natural, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but totally real, it is one of the great film performances.
It probably doesn't matter what the plot of "Dog Day Afternoon" is, if Lumet and Pacino set it in a funeral home you would probably be just as entertained. The film is a testament to talented filmmakers and actors working at the peak of their powers.
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