Dog Day Afternoon (1975) on Netflix
Sonny Wortzik leads Sal Naturile and Stevie into a Brooklyn savings bank to rob it, but the day's cash has been collected. Police surround the branch, and Sonny holds the employees hostage.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.0/10294,645 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
On August 22, 1972, as the banking day ends and the customers leave, Sonny Wortzik, Sal Naturile and Stevie walk into a small First Brooklyn Savings Bank branch with guns. Stevie loses his nerve and flees, and Sonny finds that the daily cash pickup has left only a little money in the branch. He burns the register, and the smoke draws suspicion from outside, where police surround the building. Sonny and Sal hold the manager, the security guard and eight tellers and clerks hostage. Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti calls the bank, and Sonny negotiates with him in the street, asking for a vehicle to the airport and pizzas for the hostages.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Among the demands John Wojtowicz made during the 1972 Brooklyn robbery was that police deliver his "wife", Ernest Aron, from Kings County Hospital in exchange for a hostage, "It's a guy. I'm gay", plus hamburgers, Coca-Cola and a ride to Kennedy Airport.
- Al Pacino asked Sidney Lumet to cast his Godfather co-star John Cazale as Sal, but Lumet was not initially convinced: Cazale was 39, while the real Salvatore Naturile was 18 when he died. Lumet agreed after meeting him.
- Assistant director Burtt Harris whispered to Al Pacino to ask the crowd about Attica before he left the bank, and Pacino improvised the whole dialogue with the crowd himself.
- To let Al Pacino move freely, Sidney Lumet put his cameramen on roller skates and wheelchairs for the panoramic shots, so the cameras could follow the actor.
- Senator Jacob Javits helped Sidney Lumet's crew win a single day's access to a non-terminal area of Kennedy Airport, where international flights bound for the main runway had to go around the shoot.
- The film was shot in the fall, so cast members put ice in their mouths to keep their breath from showing on camera in the cold.
- Wojtowicz sued Warner Bros. for invasion of privacy on behalf of his wife and their daughters, seeking $12 million; an appellate court ruled for the studio because the film and book used neither the family's true names nor their pictures.
- Hank Azaria's audition for The Simpsons used a voice imitating Al Pacino's Sonny Wortzik, and that imitation became the basis for the final voice of bartender Moe Szyslak.
