Dog Day Afternoon – Review

movie reviewToday we have a movie that was on my list for ages. I always read good things about it and noticed its good reputation. Now i finally found some time to check it out.

This movie shows a very young Al Pacino in his early glorious days. The movie is about some guys who plan to rob a bank. But the execution of the plan fail quite dramatically. Now they’re trapped in this building, surrounded by a ton of cops. The movie portraits the situation that really happened in New York 1972. Now the people who work in the bank soon understand the situation together with the guys who planned to rob the bank. John Cazale and Al Pacino try to master their situation and try to keep everything under control. Soon they develop a friendly situation with their hostages and all of them try to get out of the misery they landed in. While outside hell breaks lose and tons of TV stations send the drama live on television. The police is also trying to maintain order and has a hard job to do so. Negotiations between Pacinos character and a police chief start and both are looking for a way to clean this mess up.

This is a very rough explanation of the overall story. The movie works almost completely without music. Which keeps the overall drama on very high levels. Pacinos performance, as well as the other actors, works very good. You can see the tension in his eyes and face. He’s really trying to find a way out. The overall atmosphere in the movie, the setting and location shows a perfect picture of a New York in the early 70s. We’re not talking about the upper class New York. Not manhattan. It’s a bit outside the city and therefor captures a realistic mixture of people and detail.

The camera work and technical things are also ahead of their time i would say. It’s hard to believe that it’s a movie from the 1970s. Composition, camera angles really do a fine job. Especially when it’s focussed on Pacinos character. When he’s moving around like a trapped wolf. Capturing the emotions in his face and his movements really makes the camera in this movie work stand out.

So ladies and gentlemen. If you want to make yourself a nice movie evening with a good 2h movie that makes you want to know more about what really happened in 1972… then check out this one. Beside all that i think this movie is quite a nice document for its time. A little bit of history. My recommendation!

Solid 8.1/10 for me.

Dog Day Afternoon on IMDb

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