Dog Day Afternoon

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 1999)

A very funny film when you watch closely. Pacino's Sonny is a complete idiot. He goes in to rob a bank with no real thought how he's going to get out with the money or if he's going to make it out alive at all. No planning. No idea how to deal with the situation. Don't have any intention of killing anybody. Don't even know why they're robbing the bank in the first place. That's what makes the film a masterpiece. Lumet and Pacino are poking fun at the Fox-TV phenom called "America's Dumbest Criminals" : These characters who rob banks or 7-11's, get in a bind and then turn the entire ordeal into a tragedy about their lives and their hopes and dreams...not of the people being held up at gunpoint. That's brilliance!