DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) *** Not what you want to watch if you're feeling at all unstable. One of the most intense films ever made, ultimately unsettling. Demands many questions like did anyone ever do anything right? The historic intensity is generated inversely through Sidney Lumet's matter-of-fact presentation....this is what's happening...collapsing psyches littering the landscape of a terminal society. So far down the tubes that you can't even begin to see where the big mistakes were made, everything's too covered with little ones. Al Pacino is brilliant, running the scope of every human emotion, junctured like sutures awash in conflicted cross-intellect. John Cazale is his equal as the brooding one, it may have been a more difficult role. Chris Sarandon, Sully Boyar, just everybody...Lumet gets more out of his actors than other directors can imagine existing anywhere. The way that the thing just so hopelessly unfolds...and the ever-changing face of the crowd as a character. Everything that I've ever read about this film is how it's about a guy who robs a bank to pay for his boyfriend's sex change operation. I guess that's a small part of it, but it's distracting, the themes are a bit more universal however monstrously sliced. Powerful elements of black comedy are drowned in tragedy and chaos. I can't say that I enjoyed it or that I can identify any moral to justify the suffering (of the characters or myself)...but the brainpower and sheer talent that went into this film...it's such a relief to get out and see the sky and gasp at air.
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