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Writing a song or directing a film based on real-life incidents is one of the many tropes they use and we actually have many great examples: Music (Smoke on the Water, 18 & Life, Jeremy) and Movies (Raging Bull, Monster, Schindler's List) Dog Day Afternoon took inspiration from an article from Life magazine reading "Boys in the Bank" and they also described the lead robber, John Wojtowicz as "similar to Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino", so Ol' Sidney did the best thing and recruited Al Pacino after working with him on Serpico
Anyway, I consider Dog Day Afternoon to be the third in what I named Sidney Lumet's Painfully Realistic Trilogy, the first two are 12 Angry Men (his debut) and Serpico (another film starring Al Pacino). The reason for labeling them painfully realistic is because of the heavy realism, scene-wise and dialogues-wise, not found in many films. No special effects, deux ex machina, cliche storyline or wasted scenes or subplots: everyone acts and talks just like how they would do in real life. The emotions, stress and reactions to certain things are brilliantly captured in this film and I don't think anyone else could ever pull it off this convincingly. I mean, in other "bank" or "action" movies, the characters all adopt the "blast here, blast there, I just don't care" attitude and believe me, that's not how it goes. The pressure of firing one shot, just one, is tremendous and, like I said, is brilliantly showcased here. Just a side note, there are like 250 police officers and the running time is more than 2 hours and only 2 shots are fired. Can you believe it? Have you ever seen any other movie in which every character has a gun and yet only fire 2 shots? No, not me either!
I've always been a fan of Sidney Lumet (come on, who isn't?) and this film is one of the top 3 best. A very powerful, fast-paced storyline which really captures the culture of the 70's with excellent cinematography and Al Pacino's energetic, flawless performance. In the supporting, I really enjoyed Charles Durning's performance as Eugene Moretti. I really enjoy social-realism movies like these and this one is highly recommended. In conclusion, just like Easy Rider is the best counter-culture movie of the 60's, Dog Day Afternoon is the perfect counter-culture movie of the 70's and, performance-wise, Al Pacino's second best movie!
10/10
