Dog Day Afternoon
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DVD Review
Ratings And Purchasing Information
Review
Movie
Recently I was listening to the Swordfish soundtrack on the way to work, and on the soundtrack John Travolta speak about Dog Day Afternoon. He says that it is arguably Pacino's best movie and certainly Sidney Lumet's (The Directors) best movie.
Intrigued by this information I took a look on IMDB, where it currently resides with an impressive 8 out of 10, and sits in the top 250 movies of all time. I went and bought this movie on the back of this information, so how did it live up to the information I had heard?
I took a look at what the director Sidney Lumet has done, both before and since Dog Day, and I must say that I have not heard of many of the movies that he has done, and Dog Day is the only movie he has directed that I have seen.
Al Pacino who plays SonnyWortzik needs no introduction, a brilliant actor who has been in some truly great movies all throughout his career. John Cazale who plays Sal in Dog Day, only appeared in 5 movies before dying of Bone Cancer in 1978, but he was in some very good movies. Such as Godfather 1 and 2 and the Deer Hunter.
The film is based on a true story, and in reality it is a simple story, 2 friends, Sonny and Sal, decide to rob a bank, Sonny is Homosexual and is trying to get money to pay for his lovers sex change operation, his decision to rob the bank is in order to get the money to pay for that operation. Of course things go wrong and the police surround the building and a standoff develops. With the cops trying to get the hostages released and Sonny and Sal trying to get out of the situation they have found themselves in.
The film itself was made in 1975, and although some films from this era retain their appeal, such as Dirty Harry, a lot of films look dated and really don’t hold much in the way of interest anymore, this is (in my opinion) because we are too used to big explosions and state of the art special effects which seem to be more important than excellent acting these days.
I was instantly engrossed in the movie, Pacino plays the role of Sonny with hyper enthusiasm; you get the undertones that he can be extremely violent or extremely kind. If you analyse his acting in this movie and look at the facial expressions and the way he puts his lines across and his body language you can see that this is Pacino in one of his best roles.
Cazale who plays Sal, comes across as fairly quiet and I’m never really sure why he has agreed to go on this job, he even states at some point in the film, “I cannot go back to prison” and I could help but think, “then why do the job”, he is described as someone who will kill all the hostages you never really believe that he could be that callous
This movie is a must have, it holds interest from beginning to end. You care about all the characters, even the “bad guys” Sonny and Sal have vulnerability about them and you care what happens to them.
Picture
The Picture is washed out, the hues aren’t that great, and it is not 100% sharp and fairly grainy. If this was a modern movie I would send it straight back, however this is a movie made before DVD’s, to me it just the film for authenticity.
SOund
The sound I played as Dolby Digital and it was ok, there was no use of surrounds and the movie is almost entirely dialogue, I found that the dialogue was quite soft in places compared to the other noises in the film (Helicopter sounds for example), not the best sound, but hey, the movies almost 30 years old.
Extras
Cast & Crew: Filmographies of the cast.
Awards: Is a list of what awards the film was nominated for. Weak filler
Extras are very weak; I hope they release this at some point with better picture/sound and some commentary at least.
Overall:
A classic movie, gripping characters and an allround superb film, a worthy additional to the colelction.
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