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Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Director: Sidney Lumet

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From Time Out Film Guide

At first sight, a film with large, self-conscious ambitions where a bank siege (the film is based on a real incident that occurred in the summer of '72) seems a metaphor for Attica and other scenes of American overkill and victimisation. But it turns into something smaller and less pretentious: a richly detailed, meandering portrait of an incompetent, anxiety-ridden, homosexual bank robber (played with ferocious and self-destructive energy by Pacino) who wants money to finance a sex-change operation for his lover. The film's strength lies in its depiction of surfaces, lacking the visual or intellectual imagination to go beyond its shrewd social and psychological observations and its moments of absurdist humour.

Author: LQ 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Sidney Lumet

Producer: Martin Bregman, Martin Elfand

Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Sully Boyar, Penelope Allen, Beulah Garrick, Carol Kane, Charles Durning, James Broderick, Chris Sarandon full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 130 mins

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