Outstanding Drama.

Rating: 8/10 (21 April 2009)

The 1960s were a period of innovation in movies, what with the French nouvelle vague and "A Hard Day's Night" and psychedelic influences and everybody stoned and all that. But the 1970s were better. The raw chaos of the antinomian 60s was shaped and formed into structured narratives that were polished and disciplined. A number of great or nearly great film were produced, a surprising number of them dealing with criminal activity in one or another form -- "The Godfather", "Chinatown," "Serpico." "Dog Day Afternoon" is one of the best of them, the story of bisexual Al Pacino and his incredibly dim compadre John Cazale who are discovered while trying to hold up a bank in Brooklyn They take the bank's employees hostage and are undone while attempting their escape.
There isn't a sour note in any of the performances, down to the atmosphere people. Charles Durning is the frustrated NYPD negotiator who shouts himself hoarse and is almost driven mad while trying to accommodate Pacino on the one hand and the demands of his superiors and the FBI on the other.
Pacino is in top form as the fundamentally decent guy who is trying to get the money for his male wife's sex change operation, and Chris Sarandon is superb in the tough role of the male wife who now wants nothing to do with Pacino. Sarandon must walk a thin line between the suggestion of homosexuality and a parody of it, and he pulls it off perfectly in his speech and gestures. (His hands have long painted fingernails and he clutches his hospital robe close to his throat.) The phone conversation between Sarandon, in a barber shop, and Pacino in the bank across the street, is priceless. When Sarandon is first brought in, the barber shop is jammed with cops and FBI agents, and Durning is solemnly questioning Sarandon about the relationship. Sarandon confesses that he went to a psychiatrist who told him that he "was a woman trapped in a man's body." At that, one of the cops in the background who has been trying to suppress a smile all along, snickers out loud, and Durning flicks him an angry glance out of the corners of his eyes for a few seconds. It's superbly done. An instant more of the glance would have been too much, and an instant less too little. Applause for the editor.
Everything comes out just right. The ending is tragic but inevitable and perhaps even justified. The viewer is likely to become so wrapped up in the likable Pacino and his dilemmas that he forgets that Cazale has an automatic weapon and is entirely ready to kill with it.
A marvelous job all around.