Dog Day Afternoon Upends Your Expectations At Every Turn To Immensely Riveting Success

Dog Day Afternoon as a whole is just so darn good, but man, that opening sequence is especially a work of art. This opening sequence concerns Sonny (Al Pacino), Sal (John Cazale) and Stevie (Gary Springer) bursting into a New York City bank armed with guns preparing to pull off a robbery. It's a sight that sends the bank tellers and bank manager scrambling as chaos descends on their bank...but then things begin to go wrong. Sonny's timing is just a little bit off as he races through the bank, Stevie immediately wants out of the whole gig and there's nowhere near as much money as expected in the bank. In the span of one scene, Dog Day Afternoon goes from nail-biter crime thriller to dark comedy about human error. It's a masterful transition, especially since director Sydney Lumet can lend each of these different styles an authentic sensibility that totally makes you believe, for instance, that Sonny and company are about to pull off a bank robbery.



That's the last thing that happens over the course of Dog Day Afternoon, which sees this exquisite opening sequence lead into Sonny improvising and deciding to turn this would-be bank robbery into a hostage situation in order to get more money. Dude's got no experience robbing banks or hostage negotiations, but he's sure he can handle it. Of course, before he knows it, he's got armies of New York law enforcement, including Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning), outside trying to get this situation resolved while Sonny and his anti-police rhetoric have become a rallying cry for New York City onlookers. Sonny started the day a prospective bank robber and now he's become a folk hero. Who would have thunk it?

Dog Day Afternoon relies heavily on those kinds of exciting out-of-nowhere developments, there's an intentional level of chaos to the whole proceedings that ensures that nobody has a full idea of what's going on, especially not pivotal characters like Sonny, Sal or Moretti. The chaos is heightened by Frank Pierson's script leaning into how the real-life events that Dog Day Afternoon is based on transpired primarily in one location. Keeping the movie's story this cramped ends up feeding into the persistent uncertainty of the plot. Ensuring that the primary characters have no choice but to become friendly to one another also offers up the chance for one of the most delightful parts of the movie, all the mundane business going on inside the bank while the world goes to pot outside.

The bank is like an eye in the middle of a media hurricane and that means everyone inside bank begins to open up with one another, which soon entails, an unexpected but welcome charming dynamic between the hostages and the two criminals holding them captive. By the time Dog Day Afternoon hits the midway point, the various bank tellers are as casual with Sonny and Sal as if they were old friends. Whenever the camera lingers on what's going on inside the bank, the bank tellers are always amusingly engaged in their own activities that seem so rife with amusement that they could sustain their own movie. Much of their rapport generates comedy, but it's worth mentioning too an unforgettable small slice of poignancy in the climax wherein one bank teller hands Sal a cross to help keep him calm on his first plane ride, a nice way to communicate how the friendship between these seemingly disparate groups of people added up to more than just some background gags.

Also creating amusement within the bank hostage scenes are the various casual asides from Sal, a gun-toting bank robber who constantly carries the disposition of a forlorn bloodhound. Sal cautioning against a bank tellers cigarette smoking habits or expressing a desire to hightail it out to Wyoming once this robbery is done are some of the most amusing parts of Dog Day Afternoon and a good chunk of their amusing nature can be chalked up to John Cazale's masterfully understated performance. Speaking of performances, Al Pacino proves to be perfectly cast in the lead role of a live-wire who stumbles into the role of a folk hero. Pacino beautifully captures just how unpolished of a criminal Sonny actually is, he can barely conceal that he's improvising all of this as he's going along. At the same time, Pacino also makes the more emotionally vulnerable parts of this character, like a phone conversation with a lover named Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon), recognizably human.

It's fun to quote super over-the-top Pacino line deliveries and parts of his Dog Day Afternoon performance show how much fun Pacino is when he's going for broke in bits of heightened acting, but in Dog Day Afternoon scenes like that aforementioned phone conversation, one gets reminded that Pacino is just as gifted of a performer when it comes to more quiet acting rooted in reality. The fact that Pacino makes those parts of his performance so engaging help to make Sonny a far more complex character than the initially one-note clumsy bank robber he appeared to be in the outstanding opening sequence. By the end of Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino's lead performance (plus Cazale's work as an actor) will have you rooting for a bank robber who holds people hostage. That's certainly an unexpected development, but then, Sidney Lumet's remarkable Dog Day Afternoon is all about taking your expectations and twisting them upside down.