Dog Day Afternoon

Criminals become celebrities because their crimes provide fodder for the media. Many of the fashionable new crimes – hijacking, taking hostages – are committed primarily as publicity stunts. Knowing they’re on TV, hostages comb their hair and killers say the things they’ve learned on the evening news. That’s the subject, in a way, of Sidney Lumet’s pointed film. It’s based on an actual bank robbery that took place in New York in the 70’s. But DOG DAY AFTERNOON is also a study of a fascinating character: Sonny, the bank robber who takes charge, played by Al Pacino as a compulsive and most complex man. He’s street-smart, he fought in Vietnam, he’s running the stick-up in order to get money for his homosexual lover to have a sex-change operation. He’s also married to a chubby and shrill woman with three kids, and he has a terrifically possessive mother (the Freudianism gets a little thick at times). Sonny isn’t explained or analyzed – just presented. He becomes one of the most interesting modern movie characters. (Roger Ebert, 1975)