Movie Review: Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Based on a true story, Dog Day Afternoon is about a low-key bank robbery that goes wrong and turns into a media circus. It's a sizzling cinematic achievement, and among the finest of the New York based dramas of the 1970s.

Former bank employee Sonny (Al Pacino), the highly stressed Sal (John Cazale), and the hesitant Stevie (Gary Springer) walk into a bank with a vague idea of how to rob it. Stevie immediately finds the pressure too much and bails. Sonny realizes he chose to rob a bank that has barely any money: the vault deposits were transported out earlier in the day. As Sonny and Sal scramble to empty the cashier tills and then needlessly converse with the bank manager Mulvaney (Sully Boyar) and the team of cashiers, precious minutes are wasted. By the time Sonny and Sal are ready to leave, the small bank is surrounded by hundreds of cops. Sonny and Sal are now besieged hostage takers.

As a large crowd gathers and the media descends onto the scene, Sergeant Moretti (Charles Durning) tries to negotiate with Sonny, but Moretti is as incompetent as the robbers, the negotiations go nowhere, and the assembled crowd start to cheer on Sonny's anti-authoritarian rhetoric. As the hours pass, the robbery takes a bizarre turn when Sonny's motives for the theft are revealed, and his complex private life becomes suddenly very public. With Sal losing patience and everyone sweltering in the heat and humidity, FBI Agents Sheldon and Murphy (James Broderick and Lance Henriksen) take over the site, determined to bring down the curtain on the spiralling spectacle.

A small story that takes on epic proportions, Dog Day Afternoon is about losers lost in an uncaring world. Director Sidney Lumet crafts the film around a hopelessly out of his depth Sonny, and creates a tragedy around a man with modest criminal ambitions but who finds every facet of his misadventure falling apart. One accomplice flees, the other is a dangerous combination of dim and murderous, the money isn't there, his own mother and wife can't tolerate him, his hostages keep falling ill, and the heat grows ever more intense literally and figuratively in the form of half the New York police department waiting to pounce.

Although Sonny's afternoon starts badly and just gets worse, Dog Day Afternoon is also about the emerging culture of throwaway fame, Sonny getting a few hours of publicity and becoming a temporary hero to the massed crowd by whipping up anti-police sentiments. It's a small victory in a miserable afternoon, but it feels good to Sonny while it lasts. When it emerges that Sonny's private life is a sideshow all onto itself, the bank robbery almost gets pushed to the background as his bizarre personal relationships unleash a second wave of supporters and opponents shouting each other down.

Working from a Frank Pierson script that celebrates peculiarities and makes them normal, Lumet keeps the movie agile and hot despite most of the two hours taking place at the bank and its immediate surroundings. Lumet colours the bank's small corner of Brooklyn with shades of yellows and browns to emphasize the unrelenting heat. When the lights and air conditioning are turned off late in the proceedings to increase the pressure on the hostage takers, Sonny's sweat spills off the screen, while Sal just broods darker and refuses to ever take off his jacket.

Al Pacino gives an intense yet powerfully sympathetic performance as Sonny, the robber quickly becoming human, filled with self doubt and forced to try and think his way out of a much stickier situation than he ever bargained for. It is one of Pacino's most perfect performance, controlled aggression and real doubt filling his eyes and dominating his actions.

John Cazale supports with few words but plenty of menace, Sal carrying a potent rifle, and unlike Sonny, seemingly ready to use it. More fatalistic than Sonny and ready to sacrifice rather than negotiate, Cazale allows Sal's coiled frustration to emerge as the wildcard of the afternoon. Chris Sarandon as a member of Sonny's family has a small but key role, while Carol Kane appears as one of the tellers held hostage.

Dog Day Afternoon chronicles a farcical situation where no one was in control, where anything could have happened, and the crackling heat was the only certainty.

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The Movies Of John Cazale

All movies starring John Cazale have been reviewed on the Ace Black Blog and are linked below:

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Conversation (1974)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Godfather Part III (1990, archival footage, uncredited)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: The Deer Hunter (1978)

A grand Vietnam War nightmare, The Deer Hunter strides fearlessly towards bombastic audaciousness. Michael Cimino fulfills the film's promise to poke at the most tender open wound of America's psyche, and The Deer Hunter stands as a landmark cinematic achievement.

A 180 minute tragedy in three acts, the first hour introduces the small, working class steel mill town of Clairton, Pennsylvania in 1968. Friends Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) are about to join the military and be deployed to Vietnam, leaving behind the rest of their hunting buddies Stanley (John Cazale), John and Axel. Before leaving Clairton, Steven marries the pregnant Angela (Rutanya Alda), while Nick commits to marrying girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep) once he return from the war. After Steven's wedding, the guys take one final hunting trip.

In Vietnam, Michael, Nick and Steven witness gruesome action before being captured by a Vietcong unit, with a deranged commander who tortures prisoners by forcing them to participate in Russian roulette as a gambling game, with Steven held in a rat-infested underwater cage.

After a harrowing helicopter rescue is only partially successful, Michael survives the war traumatized but without physical damage and returns to Clairton. His buddies are not quite so fortunate, each introduced to a unique new hell. Michael has to try to pick up the pieces of his life, including trying to find and reconnect with his friends, and he will discover that surviving the battlefield does not always mean surviving the war.

Cimino does not waste any opportunity to amplify the impact of The Deer Hunter. From the brassy 51 minutes dedicated to the wedding, to the insane intensity of the Russian roulette nightmare, to the incredible prolongation and extension of scenes that would otherwise pass unnoticed (a side-of-the-road piss on the hunting trip becomes an excuse for an endless frat boy joke), Cimino goes intentionally overboard.

Amazingly, he achieves the desired impact. The Deer Hunter is an unforgettable and haunting journey, normal men torn away from the mundane American heartland and thrown into a faraway and surreal war zone. The relaxed time that Cimino dedicates to tell their story serves to deeply humanize Michael, Nick, Steven and their community, maximizing the impact of the permanent post-war damage that all will suffer.

A cast of current and future Hollywood royalty add to the lustre of The Deer Hunter. Robert De Niro, standing at the peak of his career, holds the core of the film together, and represents the men who were never the same, but suffered an almost manageable impact from the war. Michael is a mountain man, a killer rifle shot, and the most well equipped of his friends to survive the horrors of war. His economy of words gives way to fanatical persuasive powers when survival is at stake.

Christopher Walken won the Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Nick, a man forever intoxicated by the dance with death. Representing the men who either never came back from the war or who suffered such severe mental damage that they wished they hadn't, Walken gives Nick a facade of ruggedness over a personality susceptible to unforeseen emotional sides-wipes. John Savage's openly vulnerable screen persona is perfect for the role of Steven, doomed to agony from the moment Angela fatefully spills those almost unnoticeable drops of red wine on her white wedding dress.

After her brief debut in Julia, The Deer Hunter was Meryl Streep's first meaningful role and she makes an immediate impact as Linda, resourceful on the home front, hopeful for the return of her man, and then adapting to the emotional realities of a new post-war world. Streep was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for a complex performance that mixes playfulness, strength, hope and resignation.

Cazale was already diagnosed with terminal cancer before filming started, and died several months before the film was released. His final performance as Stanley is a perfect summary of his career, a man naturally marginalized and ever so slightly unhinged for reasons that are never quite clear.

The cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond paints Clairton with almost loveable industrial grime, while the Vietnam scenes receive hellish red and yellow hues. The Stanley Myers guitar piece Cavatina, played by John Williams, provides an exceptionally haunting musical backdrop to the unravelling human lives

The Deer Hunter ends with a hopeful rendition of God Bless America, the small community of Michael's friends beginning what will be a long healing process. It's a perfectly bittersweet and poignant ending to an exalted drama.

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Movie Review: The Godfather (1972)

The epic tale of a Mafia family in New York, spanning ten years from 1945 to 1955. The business is crime, the price of failure is death, and the violence is brutal and never far from the surface. This adaptation of Mario Puzo's book is at once haunting, beautiful, and unforgettable.

Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) is The Godfather, the New York-based head of one of five dominant Mafia families. He controls an empire with interests and influence in everything from gambling and prostitution to politicians and judges, as well as a sprawling family including sons Santino (James Caan), Michael (Al Pacino), and Fredo (John Cazale).

When they refuse to provide protection to the burgeoning narcotics business, the Corleone's are embroiled in a bloody tit-for-tat gangland war. The Don barely survives an assassination attempt, his hot-headed son Santino is spectacularly gunned-down, and the previously disengaged Michael dives headlong into the violent world of his family, personally gunning down a corrupt police chief and a rival criminal boss before fleeing to Sicily. When an uneasy peace is declared, Michael returns to New York, seeking both ultimate control and cold-blooded vengeance. Michael's rise to power from a disinterested and side-lined observer to the nexus of power is the key story arch.

As one of the greatest movies ever made, and at almost 3 hours in length, it is difficult to believe that The Godfather was the first major movie for both Francis Ford Coppolla and Al Pacino. Coppolla directs in a tableau style that turns almost every scene into a masterpiece of framing, texture and artistry, with the camera placement and movement just as interesting as the on-screen content. Every scene is given time to expand, evolve and add depth and complexion to events and characters.

One of the best cast of actors ever assembled delivers iconic performances. Pacino and Brando have the most interesting material to work with, with Brando as Don Corleone transitioning from a dominant all-powerful figure to a doddering grandfather, while Pacino is riveting as Michael is gradually transformed into a ruthless and power hungry mob leader. James Caan gets the showy role as Santino "Sonny" Corleone, excited by violence and quick to resort to it. Robert Duvall as the family's lawyer, Tom Hagen, embodies the overlap of business veneer and outright crime that defines everyday life for the Corleones.

The movie plays out against the classic music score of Nino Rota. The main theme is one of the all-time most recognized movie tunes, and by itself is capable of evoking the grandness of the Corleone's story.

The Godfather's contribution to both the history of movie-making and mainstream culture is hard to overestimate. The classic line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse"; the inter-cutting of the church baptism scene with the violent assassinations ordered by Michael; the sympathetic portrayal of mobsters; Brando's menacing performance as Don Corleone; and the operatic assassination of Sonny have all had remarkable and long-lasting influence.

Deservedly considered an all-time classic, The Godfather is a stellar example of what the art of film can achieve when a great story meets inspired movie-making talent.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.