Don't Give The Bird To A Solid Political Thriller Like Three Days of the Condor

You ever feel like you just missed something important at your job? Like, maybe you turned your back for two seconds to help a customer and you suddenly missed some important instructions or orders from your boss? Boy does Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) know that feeling. He works for a C.I.A. branch that's dedicated to looking over reading materials (like novels) to see if they overlap with actual secret C.I.A. plans. It's not glamorous, but it's a living. Anywho, one day he goes out to a diner around the corner to pick up lunch for his co-workers and comes back to discover that everybody in his office has been viciously murdered by unknown enemy forces.

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.