Dog Day Afternoon

A bank robbery goes awry. Surrounded by police the robbers (Al Pacino, John Cazale) take hostages and a long stand-off occurs.

My mind immediately springs to Lumet’s much earlier work, 12 Angry Men, in the sense that this is also a film about people stuck in a room, talking out their problems. He really has a knack for making boring things riveting, and making naturalistic film making look easy.

I love that 70s style of experimentalism, holding cameras on roller skates, improvising dialogue, shooting on-site and using locals in the audience. Lumet also allows Dog Day Afternoon a sense of humour, particularly in the botched opening bank robbery.

This is also from a time before Al Pacino was going full berserk in every role, here he gives a pronounced and elevated performance without ever going too far.

The same can be said for the film as a whole. Sure the stakes are high and there’s a lot of tension, but Lumet really gives every idea a lot of time to develop and characters a lot of room to evolve. It’s all charmingly laid back and really lets you get stuck into the story.

I was probably always going to enjoy this film, but it’s nice when something can deliver on its reputation while still subverting your expectations all these years after its release.