Dog Day Afternoon (1975) *****

Al Pacino followed up the legendary Godfather Part II with this film that tells the story of a botched bank robbery and the flaws committed by all parties in the mayhem that followed. Pacino plays Sonny, a Brooklynite who is robbing the bank to cover the expenses of his lover Leon's (played incredibly by Chris Sarandon who you kids may remember as Lord Humperdink in The Princess Bride) sex change operation. John Cazale plays the second robber, Sal, as a man on the edge- not as a raving lunatic, but a silent time bomb just waiting to go off.

Sidney Lumet had worked with Pacino a few years previous in Serpico, but this isn't the depressing drag through the mud that Serpico was. Dog Day Afternoon plays as a black comedy with the characters displaying humor and wit in a hostile situation. Most of the film takes place inside and just outside the bank that Sonny and Sal are attempting to rob which gives the film a theater-like feeling. In Sonny Pacino found one of his many trademark roles. Who can forget him just yelling "Attica! Attica!"

The only real tragedy in Dog Day is sitting there wondering what John Cazale could have been if he had survived beyond the 1970's. I've got a feeling you would have had a name that would have been equal to Pacino and DeNiro if cancer hadn't of cut his life short in the late 1970's.

Dog Day Afternoon is another one of those 1970's cinema masterpieces I like to throw out for everyone's consideration. It's one of those normal guy breakdown films that Scorsese would dive into full tilt in Taxi Driver. A real classic.