Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick, Charles During
Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but it’s been so long since I saw it, that some where in the back of my head I thought Pacino and Cazale played lovers in the film. How did I misremember the final act so thoroughly?
Did I Like It: I’ll go a little beyond the question of just liking it—Cazale is in the film, ergo it’s a classic, and your cinematic education is likely incomplete until you’ve seen it. It’s a perfect picture of the collective American psychosis decades before it ever took hold of us all. The irretrievable fusion of rationalization and desperation. Violence as heroism. Masculinity never quite being what it appears on the surface. The media as a willing accomplice for… well, whoever is willing to use them at the moment. There is nothing about the story of Sonny (Pacino) and Sal (Cazale) that couldn’t happen today, other than the fact that I don’t think the FBI would take so much pains to not put down a hostage situation over fourteen hours.
So many people I talk to blanche at the idea of classic movies. I even had a friend who proclaimed that he never watches movies released before he was born. After they brought me back to consciousness, I eventually got to the realization that people like me might oversell such cinematic staples*, so let me try to make this a little more attractive to you:
It seems like it’s the kind of drama that people in the 70s used to keep themselves in a state of perpetual depression. Or maybe it’s a thriller. Stories about bank robberies are often thrillers.
It’s really a comedy. Pacino even says as much. Dramas usually end in catharsis: This doesn’t. Thrillers—especially the ones about bank robberies—are about plans that go wrong. This is about three guys with no plan, and their scheme almost works.
*I refer you to the top of the last paragraph.