Another Masterpiece from the Golden Age of American Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2005)

During the late sixties and into the seventies, the bank heist seems to have become a metaphor for the counter culture rebellion. Bank robbers were no longer the villains, but the heroes, fighting against the capitalist establishment like an urban Robin Hood. Dog Day Afternoon is part of that tradition.
Al Pacino is, as ever, brilliant. He is able to bring charisma, charm and vulnerability to the character of Sonny Wortzik in nothing more than a way of walking, or the way he holds a phone. Troubled, insecure, confused, Sonny makes for a lousy bank robber. And yet, when he steps from the relative safety of the bank building and into the street, before a hundred waiting armed police, he changes completely. He becomes a strong, proud, prowling voice of the working class, goading the police, riling the gathered crowd. In referencing the prison massacre at Attica in 1971, he becomes a voice for the urban poor, and it is a powerful and raging voice that contains the potential for victory and success, even when you know it is doomed.
An incredibly powerful work, very much of its time, and all the better for it. The 1970's was a decade when major studios hired actors for their talent, not their looks or teen appeal. When major studios hired writers proud to take on sensitive political and social issues. When major studios financially backed and strongly promoted movies that mattered and said something. Dog Day Afternoon is the product of that system and as such, could never be made today.