Dog Day Afternoon

I found this film surprisingly endearing and funny. It's got a really interesting tone to it, combining the typical cop movie with a real human story, making Sonny a great leading character, you wanna know more and more about. Of course, we can't judge the quality of a movie like this based on how much it stays true to the real life story because film makers are allowed to take liberties and make different choices. In this case i'm glad they did because the real guy wouldn't have made me root for him at all, and Al Pacino's Sonny did just that. His performance was, obviously, the highlight of the film. I love him so much, what a man, what an actor!

A real classic that asks some difficult questions about the roles celebrity, money and responsibility play in our everyday lives. Al Pacino puts so much into his portrayal of Sonny, the stressed-out intellectual pressed a few steps over the edge, that it's no surprise he nearly suffered a nervous breakdown on the set. It's genuinely amazing how much quality characterization the filmmakers were able to fit into this regularly-sized package, and not just for the lead parts. By the time Sonny, Sal and their hostages are ready to leave the confines of the bank behind, we know more intimate details about every one of them (and, perhaps, ourselves as a society) than we ever could've guessed going in. Throwing out the script and using largely improvised dialog was a key decision, and transforms a film that could have easily become a thin piece of exploitation into something much more vivid and real. It does slow down quite a bit just before the climax, but in the grand scheme that only adds more drama to the rapid-fire conclusion.