Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

All Critics (36) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (40) | Rotten (1) | DVD (18)

Enjoyable and even exciting at the start, Dog Day Afternoon degenerates into frustration and tedium toward nightfall -- an experience no less painful for the audience than for the actors.

April 27, 2009 Full Review | Comments (55)

Dave Kehr

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

One of Sidney Lumet's best jobs of directing and one of Al Pacino's best performances (as a bisexual bank robber) come together in a populist thriller with lots of New York juice

April 27, 2009 Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

[Pacino] gives an electric performance, charged with a lunatic energy that expertly captures the weird blend of confidence and self-deprecation (if not hatred) that marks the paranoid syndrome.

August 24, 2008 Full Review

TIME Magazine

Top Critic

Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, filmmaking at its best.

August 24, 2008 Full Review

Variety Staff

Variety

Top Critic

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.

January 26, 2006 Full Review

Time Out

Top Critic

It's beautifully acted by performers who appear to have grown up on the city's sidewalks in the heat and hopelessness of an endless midsummer.

May 9, 2005

Vincent Canby

New York Times

Top Critic

As much as it is about a deeply troubled individual, "Dog Day Afternoon" is about a shift toward exploitation in the American media via live television.

May 30, 2011 Full Review

Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

Strong performances and forward-thinking situations make this political thriller an exceptionally vibrant experience.

April 11, 2011 Full Review

Wesley Lovell

Cinema Sight

Fine, but overrated Pacino vehicle directed by Lumet.

October 23, 2008 | Comments (5)

Steve Crum

Video-Reviewmaster.com

Though fact-based, Lumet's heist film (his best work) is a wild satire with farcical tones about a normless, irrational society whose (anti)heroes are crazy delusional marginal men, played with panache by Pacino and Cazale in their most spontaneous turns

September 28, 2008 Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

An American classic.

August 24, 2008 Full Review

Jon Fortgang

Film4

Pure cinema.

August 2, 2008

Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

An iconic movie, thoroughly New York, with Pacino in top form.

May 10, 2007 Full Review

Christopher Smith

Bangor Daily News (Maine)

Credit the filmmakers and stars...for bringing the events to life with such zest, such enthusiasm, and such broad appeal. (HD-DVD Edition)

April 3, 2007 Full Review

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

[Dog Day Afternoon is] so perfectly executed that it almost feels like the wall of art is being pulled back slightly, revealing the reality of life, in all its messy, contradictory, confusing wonder.

February 28, 2006 Full Review

Gil Jawetz

DVDTalk.com

• 1. Sonny: Attica! Attica!
  – Submitted by Dutch E (2 months ago)
• 1. Pizza Boy: I'm a fucking star!
  – Submitted by William C (3 months ago)
• 1. Sonny: Hey Leon! Happy Birthday!
  – Submitted by William C (3 months ago)
• 1. Sonny: Put your fucking guns down! Put your fucking guns down! Put your fucking guns down! Put your fucking guns down! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica!
  – Submitted by William C (3 months ago)
• 1. Sonny: WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN TOO ME!
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. Sylvia: Why don't you smoke?
  2. Sal: I don't want the cancer.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)

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