Dog Day Afternoon

I’d wager you either love Dog Day Afternoon or you haven’t got around to seeing it yet. It always seems to fall through the cracks in the classic movie floorboards, a very familiar name, and a big reputation but, out of films starring Al Pacino and John Cazale, it’s The Godfather everyone has seen. Dog Day Afternoon is, in some ways, the anti-Godfather – incompetence rules, the criminals are pathetic enough to be likeable, a bank robbery in the name of love! And, clumsy though it is, surprisingly for the 1970s, it is a film which celebrates the resilience of gay and trans people in love during a time when that simply wasn’t being shown anywhere else mainstream, even if it doesn’t always take that plight as seriously as one would like. Dog Day is hilarious throughout, without negating the sad tragedy of the true story it is based on; Pacino is exceptionally endearingly unintimidating and so it is incredibly fun to watch him half-succeed at outwitting the bank and the police and the FBI, if only for a moment. It’s hard to believe Dog Day Afternoon ever got made – there is no other film like it.

Daniel Kallin