Dog Day Afternoon, 1975

Superficially, it is a typical story of New York life, maybe even a microcosm of the troubles besetting the

city. That is to say, it begins in farce and ends in something akin to tragedy. A trio of amateur gunmen

(quickly reduced to a very odd couple) ineptly and comically try to hold up a Brooklyn bank branch. Al

Pacino, as the "brains" of the operation, 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.