Dog Day Afternoon
Warner Bros. | Release Date: December 25, 1975 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireAdam Smith
Pacino simmers in this daring and brilliantly constructed treatise on the many facets of a crime. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubChuck Bowen
Dog Day Afternoon is a frank social melodrama that’s also a celebration of quotidian bravery. The camera might linger on guns and barely restrained violence, but it also dwells upon the love and the support that’s extended in the weirdest and most unexpected of places. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim Robey
A masterly reconstruction of a Brooklyn bank siege on August 22, 1972, built around arguably Al Pacino's finest screen performance. Read full review
100
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
The entire cast is excellent, top to bottom. Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, film-making at its best. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film's tone is extraordinarily flexible, holding within the same reality elements of the absurd, the ridiculous and the comic while sustaining a sense of tension and dread throughout. This is, of course, one of the classic Pacino roles - he's so appealing - but don't overlook the late John Cazale as his accomplice, who gives us a character who's stupid and scared, troubled and dangerous, and disturbingly inscrutable. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Dog Day Afternoon benefits immeasurably from a cast and crew doing some of the finest work of their careers. One of the finest films of the 1970s. Read full review
100
The New YorkerPauline Kael
One of the best 'New York' movies ever made.
90
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Dog Day Afternoon is a melodrama, based on fact, about a disastrously illplanned Brooklyn bank robbery, and 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 full review
90
IGNTodd Gilchrist
For all of its social, political and cinematic significance, Dog Day Afternoon is a terrifically entertaining and emotionally devastating film to boot. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Lumet is exploring the clichés, not just using them. And he has a good feel for the big-city crowd that's quickly drawn to the action. Read full review
80
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
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 full review
80
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
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. Its details are stronger than its structure—the film loses some of its energy before the end—but it's an astonishing fusion of suspense and character, powered by superior ensemble acting. Read full review
80
NewsweekJack Kroll
Sidney Lumet's film tries very hard to be an original blend of realism, black farce and probing comment on the McLuhanatic Age that creates instant show biz out of what used to be called life. [29 Sep 1975, p.84]
70
TimeRichard Schickel
Al 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 full review
50
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
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 full review
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