Dog Day Afternoon 1975

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 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 Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: 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. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Lumet is exploring the cliches, not just using them. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: [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. Read more

Leonard Quart, Time Out: 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. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, filmmaking at its best. Read more