One Paragraph Movie Review: Dog Day Afternoon

One hundred and eleventh film: Dog Day Afternoon. About bloody time I saw this bloody good movie, and I’m sorry, but I’m going to say something controversial about it that I’m not sure has occurred to anyone before: Al Pacino is quite a good actor. Okay, I knew this was a movie about a bank robbery and that one of the perpetrators has paying for his boyfriend’s sex reassignment surgery as one of his motives, but at the risk of sounding twee, I didn’t realise how… I guess… human it was? Every single character — every bank robber, every hostage, every cop, every bystander — has a distinct personality and character, and absolutely everyone sweats a bunch. It’s based on a true story and it looks, sounds, wobbles, screeches, and stinks like one. The only distracting thing about the whole two hours was that for one hour and fifty minutes I could not get over how much John Cazale’s Sal reminds me of Tommy Wiseau. Good movie. Sweaty movie. Three and three quarter mid-siege pizza deliveries out of five.