Dog Day Afternoon

Dog Day Afternoon was made in 1975 and was directed by Sidney Lumet . The main characters in this movie were played by Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning and Chris Sarandon. This movie starts off with a robbery at a bank that was suppose to take less than 20 minutes but then later turned into day frenzy. The reason for the robbery was to pay for Sonny Wortzik’s wife for an operation that would make him happy. Sonny and Sal who were the two robbers of the bank that were sick of what was going on in the world and had enough of it. Suddenly they find themselves surrounded by the police with nowhere to go. Negotiations are set in place and the movie is then taken from there.

Dog Day Afternoon was a movie that put the cops on edge of going through a bank robbery. I feel that this movie did a great job of recapping of how it happened in real life. The scene where Sonny screams, “ATTICA!,” was a big part of this movie since it was around the time of massacre at Attica Prison. This put the cops on an uneasy side and Sonny then had the crowd of the people behind him since the cops always had their guns out aiming at Sonny. Another part of the movie that really caught my attention was when Sonny came out for the second or third time with a bag full of money and threw it to crowd for them to start collecting was another important tactic done for Sonny to give me more support against the police. I also think at this point in the movie he really didn’t care about the money except enough for the surgery but I think that’s all that mattered.

You can definitely tell how much Sonny did care about Leon. All he wanted to do was just to make her happy by getting the surgery and how content his voice was with Leon than his real wife with the kids. I feel he is more in love with Leon and cares more about him then his actual wife. For example, the phone call between Sonny and Leon was something Sonny enjoyed more than the phone conversation with his real wife who he yelled at multiple times.

The only part I didn’t like about this movie was the way they show everyone be friendly with the robbers. For example in the scene where Sonny lets one of the bankers play with the rifle gun and flip it around like a toy was something that confused me. Even though that everyone was a hostage in this situation, if I was handed a rifle gun to fling around I would use to not only my advantage but also end the robbery. Sal was sitting in the other room doing his own quiet thing while Sonny wasn’t fazed giving a hostage his own gun. I think there could have been a couple scenarios where the situation could have been different. Over all, the movie was very interesting with giving different perspective on a bank robbery that lasted an entire evening with shifted feelings of the crowd and went from a bank to the airport to have it all end is something that you don’t really see in movies today. I’m glad I got to see a 70’s movie that made me think after the movie was over with.