Dog Day Afternoon (1975) — Al Pacino

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Al Pacino · 1975 · Signature Roles

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) — Al Pacino

Sonny Wortzik robs a bank in Brooklyn on a hot afternoon, and everything goes wrong.

Sonny Wortzik robs a bank in Brooklyn on a hot afternoon, and everything goes wrong. The police arrive, the cameras arrive, the crowd gathers, and a desperate plan becomes a public spectacle. Al Pacino plays Sonny as a man talking to keep himself alive — to the hostages, to the police, to the television audience that starts cheering for him.

A crowd watching folk singing and dancing outdoors at the South Street Seaport on the East River near Brooklyn Bridge in June 1973.
Photo: Suzanne Szasz, Wikimedia Commons, public domain · Source

Based on a real 1972 robbery, the film works because Pacino never lets Sonny become a symbol. He is specific: funny, frightened, tender with the hostages, furious at a world that made him feel small. The famous phone calls, the improvised energy, the way the performance seems to be happening in real time — it is Pacino at his most alive.

The former Central Savings / Apple Bank for Savings building seen looking north up Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan, on a cloudy afternoon.
Photo: Jim.henderson, Wikimedia Commons, public domain · Source

It earned him another Oscar nomination, and it remains one of the great New York films: a crime story that is really about attention, dignity, and a man who wanted, for one afternoon, to matter.

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