Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

  Content warning:  gun violence, descriptions of domestic abuse

A bank robbery turns into a stand-off with the police on a sweltering summer day in Brooklyn, New York.

I have complicated feelings about this movie and some time on my hands.    

Let's begin with the basics.  This is a great Al Pacino performance.  Sonny is clearly and distinctly the main character, both sympathetic and repulsive, a man obviously suffering from untreated mental health issues and Pacino plays him with great dexterity.  The supporting cast is also great.  Charles Durning is probably not the guy you think of when you imagine someone going toe-to-toe with Pacino at the height of his powers, but he deserves the flowers here.  Penelope Allen, Sully Boyar, and Susan Peretz all turn in great character bits here.  You might recognize Carol Kane, Chris Sarandon, and Lance Henrikson popping in as well.  Also, if you've seen Spike Lee's Inside Man, you'll recognize Marcia Jean Kurtz, by the hair if nothing else.  (It took me nearly half the running time to place her and then I was filled with admiration for Mr. Lee for his homage.)

So, good performances.  Direction is also good.  Tension gets maintained throughout; even when it dips into tedium, it feels intentional, in order to ramp up the drama and fray the nerves.  Sidney Lumet was known for taut psychological films that didn't quite cross the line into thrillers.  He's a little dry for me, personally, but I can't deny the skill.

The nice thing about Lumet is that he definitely believes that subtext is for cowards.  The film is explicitly queer but not in a Very Special Episode kind of way.  It's a story about gay people that's not a Gay Story (tm), yeah?  Sonny is a conflicted man trying to reconcile his feelings with, again, untreated mental illness.  (I have a minor quibble over the way we're told about his violent outbursts but never shown any, but that feeds into my larger issue with the film.  More to follow.)  There's no pearl-clutching or Gay Panic.  Leon's gender dysphoria is actually handled pretty well, considering the time it was made.  I'm just saying.  It could have been way worse but Lumet chooses to treat Sonny as just another New Yorker.

The problem is Sal, the other bank robber played by John Cazale.  He's not really a character; he's a placeholder to fill plot holes.  Hear me out.  We know Sonny's motivation, as ill-conceived as it is.  We see his stressors.  He's the one that interacts with the hostages, the cops, the public.  We get nothing about Sal. He has no backstory, no character development, no reveal.  He doesn't seem to be motivated by the money (he seems a little too into the apparent suicide pact Sonny agreed to before the heist), he doesn't state any relationship to Sonny like brother (*cough*Fredo*cough) or cousin so there's no familial obligation.  He's not gay, so he's not there to help Leon.  Sonny mentions that they're both veterans but not if they served together.  But if you take his character out, Sonny is caught in about two minutes.  It's a two-man job, but the story only cares about one of them.  I don't love that.

Notwithstanding my critique, this is an excellent 70s nihilistic drama.  And it's streaming for free on YouTube.