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Dog Day Afternoon

Catalog Number
1024
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Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Release Year
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VHS | N/A | Slipcase
N/A (NTSC)
N/A | N/A | N/A
N/A | N/A
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Additional Information

Additional Information
Nobody could dream him up. His incredible bank robbery is all the more incredible...because its true.

Based on a true 1972 story, Sidney Lumet's 1975 drama chronicles a unique bank robbery on a hot summer afternoon in New York City. Shortly before closing time, scheming loser Sonny (Al Pacino) and his slow-witted buddy, Sal (John Cazale), burst into a Brooklyn bank for what should be a run-of-the-mill robbery, but everything goes wrong, beginning with the fact that there is almost no money in the bank. The situation swiftly escalates, as Sonny and Sal take hostages; enough cops to police the tristate area surround the bank; a large Sonny-sympathetic crowd gathers to watch; the media arrive to complete the circus; and police captain Moretti (Charles Durning) tries to negotiate with Sonny while keeping the volatile spectacle under control. When Sonny's lover, Leon (Chris Sarandon), tries to talk Sonny out of the bank, we learn the robbery's motive: to finance Leon's sex-change operation. Sonny demands a plane to escape, but the end is near once menacingly cool FBI agent Sheldon (James Broderick) arrives to take over the negotiations. ~

Upon its release, Dog Day Afternoon received overwhelmingly positive reviews. As of April 2013, the film holds a 97% "fresh" rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website.[16] Vincent Canby called it "Sidney Lumet's most accurate, most flamboyant New York movie" and praised the "brilliant characterizations" by the entire cast.[17] Roger Ebert called Sonny "one of the most interesting modern movie characters" and gave the movie three-and-a-half stars out of four.[18] As time has passed, the film has continued to generate a positive critical reception. For example, Christopher Null has said that the film "captures perfectly the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, a time when optimism was scraping rock bottom" and that "John Wojtowicz was as good a hero as we could come up with".[19] P.F. Kluge, author of the article that inspired the film, believed that the filmmakers "stayed with the surface of a lively journalistic story" and that the film had a "strong, fast-paced story" without "reflection" or "a contemplative view of life".[2] Dog Day Afternoon also ranks 443rd on Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[20] Vrij Nederland named the bank robbery scene the third best bank robbery in film history, behind bank robbery scenes from Raising Arizona (1987) and Heat (1995




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