86
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100EmpireAdam SmithEmpireAdam SmithPacino simmers in this daring and brilliantly constructed treatise on the many facets of a crime.
- 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.
- 100San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSan Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleThe 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.
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineDog 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.
- 90The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyDog 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.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertLumet 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.
- 80Time OutTime OutThe 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.
- 50Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrEnjoyable 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.