Shades of Gray at the Video Store: Dog Day Afternoon

It's remarkable how good an actor Al Pacino is, something I tend to lose sight of as I watch him in his current incarnation rampaging across sets devouring the scenery in movies like The Devil's Advocate and Two For The Money. This movie, I think, shows him at about his absolute peak, not least because the character he plays is both similar to his most iconic roles in that he's a bank robber, and very different, in that he's a complete incompetent and his motivation for robbing the bank-obtaining money for his partner's sex change operation-is about as untypical as you're likely to find in a movie about a bank robbery.

The movie is very well written and brilliantly acted by all of the principals. The phone call scene between Pacino's bank robber and his hysterical partner, played by Chris Sarandon in particular was completely convincing. I Also, one of the first things that occurred to me as the credits began to roll was the remarkable effect shooting the movie with no ambient music had on the tension and realism of the film; I think you get a much better idea of the mixture of boredom and tension at a hostage situation for the lack of background music.

The other thing that struck me was just how hands-off the police seemed to be in the early seventies, at least in comparison to how I seem to think of them today. There's a scene where Pacino gets tackled by a non-police observer of the standoff, and the police immediately converge on the two of them...to arrest the other guy and let Pacino go. Granted, Pacino's character does have a partner in the bank robbery training a gun on eight hostages, but when I compare the behavior of the cops in Dog Day Afternoon to the behavior of cops in modern hostage dramas like Inside Man, they were an awful lot less opportunistic and aggressive. To give one example, in Inside Man Denzel Washington's police inspector, given far less favourable circumstances than the cops in Dog Day Afternoon, tackles Clive Owen's robber chief and attempts to arrest him despite the fact that his confederates still have the hostages under guard.

Conservatives like to talk about how the 1970s in the States saw a widespread shckling of the police, with a corresponding rise in crime rates. I think a lot of things have contributed to a fall in crime rates since the early nineties, but I don't really think there's much question that the police are more aggressive and more respected today than they were thirty years ago. The role the crowd plays in Dog Day Afternoon, I think, demonstrates this at least in terms of popular culture; they're unambiguously on Sonny's side throughout the standoff, and derisive of the police in a way I have trouble imagining a contemporary crowd being.

Anyway, it's an excellent movie, and you should see it if you haven't already. We strive, as always, to provide cutting edge cultural criticism here at Shades of Gray, and today is no exception.