What a great movie!

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2014)

What a great movie! Visiting it again after a near forty-year gap, I'm astounded how well it stands up, in spite of it being so firmly rooted in the 1970s. It's definitely one of the top NYC pictures: the opening sequence captures the city in many moods and places before homing in on a Brooklyn bank, scene of a botched robbery by Sonny (Pacino) and Sal (Cazale). What follows is constantly engaging.
One of the many fascinating things about DOG DAY AFTERNOON is the quality of the acting, both on an individual and collective level. Pacino is extraordinary as Sonny. Gentle and angry, crazy and lucid, a volatile pack of explosives threatening to detonate at any moment. But he is given rock-solid support from Cazale, Durning (amazing), James Broderick, Chris Sarandon, and the entire ensemble of bank hostages led by terrific Penelope Allen. The only cast member who doesn't score a bullseye is Judith Malina as Pacino's mother: there's something not quite right about her big scene, though I can't put my finger on what. It needed Lee Grant, or Estelle Parsons. But it's a tiny cavil. A work of art doesn't need to be perfect to be great. The two rarely go together, in my experience.
The camera work ranges effortlessly over documentary-style helicopter shots over the city to classic claustrophobic close-ups in the bank. The editing by Dede Allen is breathtakingly good - it's completely absurd that she did not win the year's Oscar for her work here. The whole is masterminded brilliantly by Sidney Lumet, at the top of his game.
A classic.