Why does Dog Day Afternoon Afternoon, starring Al Pacino and John Cazale, continue to be such a great movie?

Why do audiences sympathize with Sony?

``Dog Day Afternoon Afternoon'' opens with Elton John's ``Amorina''. In `` Rocketman '' (1919), this song was used in the scene where he heads to the new world of America. To this song, at the beginning of the film, the streets of New York at the time are shown like a documentary film.

What is important here is that each time the scene changes, a dilapidated, poor cityscape and an orderly, prosperous cityscape are alternately shown, creating a contrast. Simply put, it is a contrast between the rich and the workers. By showing the cityscape, it seems as though he is trying to convey the social background of this era to viewers of later eras. In addition, footage of highways and airplanes is casually inserted, and you can see that it also serves as a foreshadowing of what will happen later.

"Dog Day Afternoon" preview

As director Sidney Lumet says, ``Realism and naturalism are two different things.Realism is a condensed version of naturalism that gives direction to it.''The film opens like a documentary film, showing the reality of the city. By doing so, he is able to create a production that allows the audience to feel the events of the play in a natural way. Since the film is based on an incident that actually happened, Lumet said he made sure to recreate the details and avoid injecting any personal thoughts or feelings into the film.

This film was also characterized by its portrayal of the ``Stockholm Syndrome,'' in which a crime victim develops a psychological bond with the criminal by spending a long time with him. The fact that the audience gradually sympathizes with the criminal Sonny (Al Pacino), who is supposed to be a ``criminal'' = ``bad guy,'' is a result of the director's efforts to eliminate subjectivity as much as possible.

Although the character Sonny is a criminal planning a robbery, he is kind to the hostages. Therefore, the more his ``circumstances'' are depicted, the more the audience begins to understand his principles of behavior, similar to the hostages, by comparing them to their own circumstances. He begins to feel the same feelings of "extenuating circumstances" he feels toward the criminals in the movie, and begins to empathize with them, as he empathizes with Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix), the main character of " Joker " (2019). It is similar to the mechanism of The climax of this is the scene in which Sonny incites the onlookers with "Attika! Attika!" and creates a sense of solidarity. This is because the audience, like the hostages in the play, leans toward Sony's ``fake justice'' and falls into ``Stockholm Syndrome.''

"Dog Day Afternoon" (c) 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

It is also important to note that Sonny is a Vietnam veteran and should be treated as a hero by the United States. However, in reality, he is unemployed and content to live in a low-income bracket. In other words, his situation is not much different from that of John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone in `` Rambo '' (1982), which depicts a Vietnam veteran who is treated as a nuisance to society. It wasn't until `` Homecoming '' (1978) and `` The Deer Hunter '' (1978) that Hollywood movies began to seriously depict PTSD using the Vietnam War as a theme.

In addition, it was taboo in Hollywood at the time to directly portray the main character, Sonny, as gay, but it was not only a pioneer in Hollywood star Al Pacino to play a homosexual, but also ``Dog Day Afternoon'' is also great in that it hints at the problems of the Vietnam War.

Forgotten John Cazale