Opening with Elton John's song "Amoreena" taken from his "Tumbleweed Connection" album of 1970, Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon begins with a montage of people ending their workdays at the peak of summer, 1972. Shots include pans across grid locked cars, the famous skyline of New York City and a number of odd urban sights and sounds to support the opening credits. Finally "Amoreena" receives its diegetic anchor in the car stereo of three suspicious looking characters parked outside a bank at closing time.

From that point forward the movie relies only on source sounds and dialogue to propel itself forward. Nowhere is there a symphonic score or any use of popular music to distract from the action at hand that is, quite simply, the telling of a real life Brooklyn bank heist gone awry.

As one of the taglines for the picture read, "In August, 1972, Sonny Wortzik robbed a bank. 250 cops, the F.B.I., 8 hostages and 2,000 onlookers will never forget what took place." Therein is the plot of Dog Day Afternoon and for its two hours running time the sequencing quickly builds on the failed crime to then try resolving the tension of a hostage situation. One side effect of this switch in emphasis is an interesting commentary about the police, media celebrity, criminal behavior and the odd motivations that cause people to do extraordinary things.

At the center of it all is Sonny (Al Pacino), a sensitive, simple-minded but ultimately bighearted bank robber with a problem. Namely, he's gay and despite his traditional family life he's pressured by the demands of his closeted personality to raise funds for his lover, Leon (Chris Sarandon), who wants a sex change operation.

Resolving to rob a bank as the answer to his various financial headaches including a dismissive father, an hysterical mother, an overweight wife, two young daughters and his gender confused lover, Sonny employs his friends Sal (John Cazale) and Stevie (Gary Springer) to help him. Upon entering the bank with guns raised, ready to empty the vault, however, Stevie chickens out leaving Sonny's plans flat in but a few precious minutes as Sal paces the floor with an automatic rifle.

Like the second tagline used to market the film, Sonny's problem becomes one of desperation and the lack of personal sophistication. Though, "The robbery should have taken 10 minutes. 4 hours later, the bank was like a circus sideshow. 8 hours later, it was the hottest thing on live TV. 12 hours later, it was all history. And it's all true."

Not only does the robbery attempt fail, Sonny and Sal prove themselves bumbling criminals since they aren't interested in killing their hostages so much as they just want to get away, and scot-free if possible. First on seen to thwart their plans is NYPD detective Moretti (Charles Durning) under whose watch the standoff quickly becomes a farce with then-contemporary nods to the uprisings at Attica and the Stonewall riots. Police sharpshooters ring the nearby rooftops and Sonny slowly hatches a fantastic scheme of using his hostage leverage to escape the country on a jet.

Eventually the FBI arrives on scene to complicate matters and lend the situation and air of quiet doom. Sonny's negotiations expand to include an emotionally charged exchange with Leon, a confused shouting match with his wife and several other incidents to suggest how out of control one seemingly simple robbery can be. Through it all Sal waits for some resolution with an itchy trigger finger as Sonny paces, sweats and tries to come clean about his personal life suddenly made quite public.

When a limousine arrives to take them to the airport, Sonny's escape plans seem close at hand. Stopped on the tarmac to release the hostages Sal is shot through the head and Sonny is captured, thus ending a standoff of significant proportions. Upon its release the movie-going public embraced the film and celebrated its timeliness and provoking performances. It went on to be named among the year's best movies and has since turned into one of the more prominent dramas of the 1970s.

Eventually earning investors some $22.5 million in box office rentals, Dog Day Afternoon also remains consistent with Lumet's overall career that has focused most consistently on social problem films. Where other such work, Twelve Angry Men perhaps most notably, narrowed the focus to illuminate troubles between individual people, this Pacino-vehicle is more a statement about social forces at work.

The police are everywhere threatening, well armed and one shade away from incompetent. Swelling crowds of gawkers and interested onlookers form a chorus to Sonny's inconsistent demands along with a critical voice of the FBI agents who bring matters to a close as calculated technicians and killers. Nowhere is there a respite from the relentlessness of the siege except for at its center in Sonny's motivation that's only revealed in the picture's second half when Leon is delivered to police headquarters across the street from the bank.

It's there, in the unconventional relationship of Sonny and Leon, that the film finds its heart and defines a set of moral values. Love becomes the engine of the robbery and though it's confused by factors like gender roles, sexual orientation, blue-collar life and prohibitions against homosexuality, poverty and crime, among others, romantic affection is the reason why a bank in Brooklyn became the site of media circus in 1972.

Significantly Frank Pierson's Oscar-winning script embraced these facts of the underlying crime from which he drew inspiration, if not from the articles of P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore. Prejudice, slang, hopelessness and failure to make real human connection are evident throughout his tightly told story. So are the banalities of hostage situations when led by humane, three-dimensional perpetrators like Sonny and Sal who don't want to hurt anyone no matter how much they put on airs of being murders.

Nominated for multiple Academy Awards for 1975, it competed for the top honor with four other titles, any one of which might have made an appropriate Best Picture. Eventual winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was raised above its peers through force of Jack Nicholson's performance, though the other three pictures deserve praise for their own brand of cinematic excellence. Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon reveals a compelling costume drama along with innovative technical developments concerning the use of ambient light, Steven Spielberg's Jaws announced the young director's presence as a thrilling filmmaker of seemingly limitless talent and Robert Altman's Nashville sketched an unforgettable portrait of its eponymous city while simultaneously lambasting the carrion nature of the mass media.

In good company, then, was Lumet's picture considered and it's telling that the entire film rests almost totally on the immediacy and sense of place supplied by the director, Pierson's script and the Oscar-nominated editor, Dede Allen. Still, Dog Day Afternoon is, first and last, an actor's vehicle. Stepping up to the plate Al Pacino equaled his previous star turns on the New York stage and enhanced his reputation on the silver screen that was largely connected to Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies.

When given Pacino's superstardom in subsequent decades it's a real treasure to trace the intensity and affect of his skill as an actor through several of his more memorable roles. Surely his performance as Sonny is among them since it is the most important single part of a good movie that's well delivered by a talented cast and crew.