Dog Day Afternoon

Ex-con Sonny (Al Pacino) calculating options with hostages (Penny Allen, Sully Boyar) in the Brooklyn bank, consults with his dim-witted fellow ex-con partner Sal (John Cazale), Charles Durning as the city cop Moretti, Sidney Lumet directing from Frank Pierson’s fact-based screenplay, in Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Something of a spoiler, as writer Frank Pierson delivers one of the noted plot curve-balls of the decade in his fact-based screenplay, as cop Moretti (Charles Durning) tells hostage-holding bank robber Sonny (Al Pacino) that his wife has arrived, not expecting Chris Sarandon as Leon, in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Bank robber Sonny (Al Pacino), now holding hostages, rallies the Brooklyn crowd, citing the infamous 1971 prison riot, after an obscene in-person confrontation with cop Moretti (Charles Durning), a famous scene from Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

The newsy original trailer for Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Following credits establishing Brooklyn, NY, August 22, 1972, Sonny (Al Pacino), Sal (John Cazale) and hesitant Stevie (Gary Springer) begin their bank job, in Sidney Lumet's fact-based Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Having bungled trying to burn the traveler's check register, bank robber Sonny (Al Pacino) and partner Sal (John Cazale) learn from the manager (Sully Boyar) that cop Moretti (Charles Durning) is on the phone, in Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Actor Edward Norton compares directors Spike Lee and Sidney Lumet in this excerpt from TCM's Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence, (2008).