Dog Day Afternoon

Here is my confession:  I've known about this movie all my life, but never watched it.  Apparently, the film appeared in theaters just before I had access to movies -- when I was an adolescent, I didn't have a car and there were no movie theaters in the remote suburbs of Eden Prairie and going to the movies was not something that my family did:  my parents were the first generation really, and profoundly, enamored with television.  Because of its raw language, Dog Day Afternoon was, presumably, rated "Adults only" and this may also have been a reason that I never saw the film in a theater.  The picture is gripping, but not ambitious -- it's a kind of docu-drama of a real event, filmed in Hollywood's best "invisible" style, with objective, naturalistic camera-work and performances that are surprisingly understated, given Al Pacino's propensity to chew the scenery.  After an impressive city montage, visually the most interesting thing in the film, the picture begins with the inception of the misbegotten heist and ends with the hero led off the tarmac at JFK in handcuffs that same night.  The movie maintains Aristotelian unities of time and place -- the action seems to proceed in, more or less, real time and, with one exception (which is really a "cheat"), everything takes place at the Brooklyn branch bank where an attempted robbery devolves into a hostage stand-off.  This scrupulously observed scheme is ruptured in only one scene -- we see Sonny's wife and kids at a park and, then, at Sonny's parents' home.  This is a calculated misdirection designed to render surprising the film's single unanticipated and ostensibly shocking development -- this is the fact that the person to whom Sonny refers as "his wife" is a man, a bedraggled effeminate homosexual named Leon, played by Michael Sarandon wearing a frumpy housedress.  This is the only point at which the film deviates from our expectations and, in fact, the movie's ending is exactly what we have been anticipating for two hours.  I recall the publicity on the film emphasized the fact that Sonny had mounted the raid on the bank in order to steal enough money to finance Leon's sex-change operation (it costs the lordly amount of $2500).  Presumably, this plot development was also well-known to those who had read the Life magazine story about the robbery, the film's source.  And, so, Lumet's strategy of feinting toward Sonny's actual (female) wife and, then, pulling Leon out of his hat doesn't surprise us -- we already know about this twist in the story.

Although the film doesn't really have much action, it's also not "theatrical" or "talky":  the script is taut, laconic, and there are no real explanatory speeches.  (The exception to this is a sequence near the end when Sonny dictates his Will in a histrionic, self-dramatizing manner),  Compared to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky or, even, First Blood, Pacino doesn't really get much in the way of big scenes and he has no "arias" or soliloquies.  His character remains enigmatic:  posited as a Vietnam war veteran, not much of anything is made of that background; we know that he worked in a Bank because he has a superficial understanding of the protocols of such a place.  How he managed to marry Angela and have two children with her while maintaining another marriage to Leon is unclear -- his "marriage' to Leon was actually formal, with male bridesmaids and a Catholic priest.  And, if Sonny,the protagonist, is mysterious, his side-kick, Sal, played by the great and doomed John Casale, is even more undeveloped -- in point of fact, the part is underwritten as if nothing was really known about this character in the actual bank robbery and, therefore, nothing could be shown about him in the film either.  Sal has a machine gun and he seems psychotic, apparently, willing to gun everyone down if Sonny gives the cue, but we don't know what's behind his brooding, sullen ferocity.  There's no explanation as to why he's drawn to the inept and grandiose Sonny.  We don't know his background except that he's been in prison and doesn't want to return to jail -- this is the background supplied for underwritten thugs from the era of D. W. Griffith to this very day.  There's a suggestion that his morbid, sullen mask of a face covers nothing more than pure stupidity.  When asked where he would like the jet that they intend to commandeer to take them, he hesitantly says "Wyoming".  Sonny says:  "Sal, Wyoming is in this country."  Sal looks baffled.  Throughout the hostage stand-off, the cops suggest to the flamboyant Sonny that "they will take care of Sal", meaning that they intend to put a bullet through his brain. 

The film moves by jerks and fits:  it doesn't really develop.  Sonny enters the bank with Sal and another confederate.  This third robber is just a kid and he quickly develops cold feet -- he flees the bank after asking Sonny if he can use the get-away car.  Sonny tells  him "no," that he'll have to take the subway.  The bank turns out to have no money.  The bank security guard, an old Black man, has asthma and has to be evacuated.  When Sonny sets a bank register on fire, a neighbor notices the smoke and, apparently, calls the cops.  Hundreds of police appear and take up sniper positions on the adjacent buildings.  (The vast army of police besieging the bank is more than a little ridiculous-looking -- the film in many ways is similar to Steven Spielberg's maiden feature, The Sugarland Express, also dramatizing a quixotic crime that is the subject of an enormous over-reach by law enforcement.  For the first half of the movie, Charles Durning plays the tough, but pragmatic, local police chief who tries to keep things from escalating into a bloodbath.  Durning does well with the role of exasperated, but, essentially decent, police chief.  (This was the part played by Ben Johnson in The Sugarland Express).  But, then, he's replaced by the FBI chief investigator, a scowling presence who doesn't have any good lines and seems to want to do things by the book, an approach that will inevitably lead to someone's death.  The film loses a little steam when Durning inexplicably vanishes -- he was a character with some density and gravitas; the FBI guy is just a mannequin and the government assassin deployed to the scene, played with chilling efficiency by a very young Lance Henrickson, is as robotic as the part that the actor would later play in Alien --in fact, in Alien, Henrickson is more human than in Dog Day Afternoon.   Sonny suffers the pangs of the damned:  first, he has to endure a long and accusatory phone call with Leon; then, Angela abuses him on the telephone for "being crazy",  more or less picking up where Leon left off; then, the cops bring Sonny's mother, who is equally nasty, and judgmental -- all of these characters regard Sonny as their cross to bear and they don't hesitate to abuse him for making their lives miserable.  When you see what these people are like, you can understand Sonny's desperation. He's surrounded on all sides by people who are ridiculously self-centered, and, after the fashion of New Yorkers, unhesitating in their propensity to heap vituperation on the poor man.  The film is famous for a couple of scenes in which Sonny stirs up the crowd, creating a sort of Robin Hood ambience to the crime-scene -- at one point, he chants "Attica! Attica!" as the crowd takes up the cry and, later, he hurls fistfuls of money at the mob gathered around the siege.  (This sequence fails on the most fundamental level -- how do you throw money?  It just flutters around and can't be propelled far enough to reach the crowd forced back behind police barricades.  Lumet has to shoot these scenes from a distance because he can't figure out to get the wads of money to fly far enough to reach the crowd.)  The scenes in which Sonny agitates the mob don't go anywhere.  The mob seems equally divided -- half the people want to lynch Sonny; the other half think he's a  hero.  At one point, Gay activists also join the crowd.  Meanwhile inside the Bank, Sal is brooding about the TV coverage that says that "two homosexuals" have seized hostages.  "Sonny," he says, "you gotta tell 'em that I'm not a homosexual."

Dog Day Afternoon is claustrophobic and ultimately trapped in the strait-jacket of docu-drama, that is the actual facts of the news story. The story can't really develop because what happened in the bank robbery is, more or less, utterly predictable.  Pacino gives a fine, alarming performance as a man who seems totally trapped -- but the film is also a sort of trap and it makes the audience also feel confined.  The picture has to adhere straightforwardly to a plot that isn't all that good and has nowhere to go.  (The ensemble work by the bank tellers, all of them women, is exceptionally fine.)   In summary, Dog Day Afternoon isn't as good as its reputation.