Dog Day Afternoon (Widescreen & Full Screen)

"He wants to know when you'll be through."

"No, I don't want to be paid, I don't need to be paid. Look, I'm here with my partner and nine other people, see. And we're dying, man. You know' You're going to see our brains on the sidewalk, they're going to spill our guts out. Now, are you going to show that on television' Have all your housewives look at that' Instead of AS THE WORLD TURNS' I mean, what do you got for me' I want something for that."

"Attica! Attica!"

Academy Awards 1975 - Best Original Screenplay: Frank Pierson

Uncut - 03/01/2006
4 stars out of 5 -- "Pacino gives one of the performances of his career....Lumet's gritty 1970s landmark remains one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to deal with gay and transsexual characters in a relatively unsensational manner..."

Widescreen Review - 04/01/2006
"DOG DAY AFTERNOON swarms with energy, excitement and drama."

Sight and Sound - 05/01/2006
"The combination of simmering tension, comedy and pathos is adroitly handled by the director and his excellent cast."

Al Pacino plays a ferocious and fed-up bank robber in Lumet's classic film DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Balancing suspense, violence, and humor, the film's depiction of a grand-scale media event craftily dives from the political to the personal, evoking a piercing portrait of a man and his devastating downward tumble as seen through the media circus that Lumet made a career of chronicling. Pacino is heartbreakingly real as Sonny, a smart yet self-destructive Brooklyn tough whose plan to rob the local bank to fund his male lover's (Chris Sarandon) sex change goes absurdly wrong. Accompanied only by his doltish accomplice, Sal (John Cazale), Sonny realizes that all the money had been removed before his arrival, and decides to kidnap a handful of bank employees instead. As the lengthy August day drags on, Sonny and hordes of local police, led by Sergeant Moretti (Charles Durning), make little progress, and eventually Sonny's wife and lover are brought to the scene. The crowd's sympathy is immediately captured by the charismatic Sonny, whose antagonism with the police is played out before an audience of millions, leading to an inevitably tragic finish.

Essential Cinema | Gay / Lesbian | Mishaps | Recommended | Theatrical Release | Thieves | True Story

Award Winners:

• Academy Awards - Best Original Screenplay

Genre:

• Drama Movies

Movie Categories:

• Dramas

Product Groupings:

• Closed Captioned