Showbits

Having heard this post's titular cry in everything from Saturday Night Fever to Daredevil, I wondered what it referenced. My research led me to the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.

This classic Al Pacino film opens on a warm day in 1972 with two characters holding up a Brooklyn bank. I was immediately fascinated with the alacrity with which this main plot emerges. There is no build-up, no introduction to the characters, no review of their heist plans or motivations: just two guys, two guns, and a bank full of tellers. The film gives its audience action to focus on at the same time it plants, in the movie and in the viewers' heads, the threads of character development, which then play out as the robbery devolves into a hostage situation.

Though Pacino and his partner, John Cazale — whose only other notable role was as Fredo Corleone in the first two Godfather movies — are the film's stars, the supporting characters provide the film's fascinating context. The six female tellers and their manager quickly display the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, justified by Pacino's conscience as he expresses concern for their welfare (ensuring they have food, water, bathroom breaks, and medication), creating an interesting interplay between what should be two opposing factions. Instead, the scene inside the bank is akin to a power outage: a group of blameless friends hanging out, waiting for the situation to end and life to return to normal.

Outside characters also play important roles. The police know that if anything happens to Pacino's character, his partner in the bank will kill the hostages, providing a a safety net that allows Pacino's character to regularly step outside the bank to meet with police and other parties. Detective Sergeant Moretti, who I originally mistook for local bad boy Brian Dennehy, was in fact played by Charles Durning, who would later go on to such roles as the love interest in the Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie.

All these dynamics are further underscored by the film being true to life. I don't mean the "based on a true story" marketing gimmick used in films like Defending Your Life; all the characters and events in Dog Day Afternoon actually happened in 1972 Brooklyn. Hostage survivors were quoted as saying "I've had more laughs tonight than I've had in weeks" and "[I]f they had been my houseguests on a Saturday night, it would have been hilarious." From behind bars, the criminal on whom Pacino's character was based wrote a letter to the New York Times, praising the film but outlining its points of departure from historical record.

Lest we forget how I came to this film in the first place, Dog Day Afternoon is set shortly after the Attica Prison riot of 1971, when excessive force was used in recapturing a prison from its inmates, resulting in the death of ten hostages. Pacino uses this to good effect as he rallies the crowd outside the bank to his cause, becoming something of a star. It is this aural background and the dialogue shouted over it that provides the atmosphere, not a musical soundtrack, which is effectively absent.

But as the movie gets odder, both his popularity and my interested waned. Or perhaps the break in momentum, as I watched the film across two days, explains the decline I experienced in Dog Day Afternoon's second half. It is here that we learn more of Pacino's motivations and the film's secondary characters, neither proving what I expected and thus disrupting the flow of the film. I don't fault the directors for their adherence to the truth, though; rather, I applaud them for relating it, no matter how strange, and not embellishing it or offering a more common fare.

Overall, Dog Day Afternoon is a good film, though I can think of two I prefer. Employing the motif of a desperate man pushed to the edge, Michael Douglas' Falling Down is fantastic, making the audience question where its loyalties lie: with the protagonist, or with the good guys. On the lighter side (which Dog Day Afternoon definitely has) is Airheads, with its all-star cast of Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, Chris Farley, Joe Mantegna, Michael McKean, and Michael Richards. Three rock musicians hijack a radio station to get their music on the air; when police surround the place, the criminals find themselves with friends on both the outside and inside.

Regardless of your tack, any of these three films will give you a good afternoon.

Tags: Al Pacino, Attica, bank heist, Dog Day Afternoon, Fredo Corleone, John Cazale, John Wojtowicz, PF Kluge, Sidney Lumet, Sonny Wortzik

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