Dog Day Afternoon

Sonny seems like a genuinely intelligent person committing a genuinely stupid act, but he's surrounded by people in his personal life who in the movie appear like genuine morons. Stevie quits and runs away; Sal is a automaton; Sonny's wife is a motor-mouth; Sonny's boyfriend is a basket case; Sonny's mother is a nag. It's no wonder he cracked up.

"Dog Day Afternoon" is a comedic thriller whose tone eventually turns deadly serious. It follows the incidents of the actual story in basic outline if not in detail, but it largely retains the real-life ending. It is perhaps not a great or classic movie, but it is gripping throughout, and it will have you smiling quite a lot, too. Be aware, however, that it is rated R for profanity and plenty of it.

The Academy nominated the movie for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (Chris Sarandon), Best Editing (Dede Allen), and Best Writing (Frank Pierson), with only Pierson taking away the award.

Video:
In the standard-definition edition I reviewed about a year earlier, I thought the picture quality was as good as we might have expected from a thirty-year-old film. This time the WB engineers do just as precise a job transferring the film to HD-DVD. Again, the 1080-resolution remastering retains most of the film's original 1.85:1 theatrical-release ratio, with exceptionally deep black levels. Colors that sometimes seemed a little off in the SD version are here rendered quite naturally, and there is none of the minor line flutter, the moiré effects, that I noticed before in things like Venetian blinds and rows of bricks in buildings. Needless to say, object definition and detailing are sharper and clearer than ever, fully up to HD-DVD standards. The only bugaboo is a small degree of grain that was undoubtedly inherent to the original film stock and makes the overall image look a tad rough. Also, you have to consider that Lumet shot much of the film with natural lighting, sometimes leaving faces in complete darkness. The HD-DVD transfer honors the filmmaker's intent.

Audio:
On the HD-DVD the disc carries an excellent Dolby Digital Plus monaural track. It has more punch and greater transparency than the SD edition's regular Dolby Digital 1.0, the DD+ opening up with strong dynamics, a smooth midrange, and a well-extended high end. One hardly notices that there is no stereo spread, no surround information, and little deep bass. One hardly cares.

Extras:
On the HD-DVD, Warner Bros. repeat the bonus items they put on their standard-definition Special Edition. The first thing you'll find is an audio commentary by director Sidney Lumet. Lumet, now in his eighties and still going strong after directing movies for close to sixty years, calls the shooting of "Dog Day Afternoon" an "adventure." A "dog day," he explains, is "a hot, miserable day when nothing is happening in New York," the perfectly ironic title for the ironies of the movie to follow. He admits that when he started out to do the commentary, he hadn't watched the film in over twenty years, and there are long pauses among his comments where he is obviously enjoying the film again himself. Late in the commentary he tells us it took only about thirty-two days to shoot, almost completely on location; and I was right about the improvisation, much of which was Pacino's and the cast's own doing. This is an attentive and loving commentary that makes for easy yet informational listening.

Just as on the SD edition, the HD-DVD contains two documentaries, both in standard 480 resolution. The most important is a new, widescreen, thirtieth-anniversary affair called "The Making of Dog Day Afternoon." It's divided into four parts, which you can access separately or all at once. The first part is "The Story." It is about twelve minutes long and includes comments from producer Martin Bregman, screenwriter Frank Pierson, and star Al Pacino. One of the things they mention is that the story came to their attention via a "Life" magazine article by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore. The second part is "Casting the Controversy," about thirteen minutes with further comments from director Sidney Lumet, who earlier had worked with Bregman and Pacino on "Serpico"; co-stars Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, and Lance Henriksen; and editor Dede Allen. The third part is the longest, "Recreating the Facts," twenty-one minutes. It contains remarks from director of photography Victor J. Kemper and assistant director Burtt Harris in addition to comments from all of the above-named filmmakers. Finally, there's "After the Filming," an eleven-minute segment in which Lumet tells us there is a difference between realism and naturalism in films, and that he tried hard to get "Dog Day Afternoon" to be as naturalistic as possible.

The one minor disappointment I had after watching the documentary was not finding out what had become of the real-life film characters, where they were today. The end of the movie tells us that the court sentenced Sonny to a twenty-year prison term, and that's all we get. However, doing a little research, I discovered that Sonny Wortzik's real name is John Wojtowicz and that he served seven years of his sentence before being paroled. Where he is today is something of a mystery, however, one rumor suggesting that he is alive and well and living on welfare somewhere in New Jersey. Anyway, after that is a vintage featurette, "Lumet: Film Maker," ten minutes long, in fullscreen, rather anticlimactic.

The HD-DVD package concludes with thirty scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As usual, Warner Bros. also include a zoom-and-pan feature, an indicator of elapsed time, bookmarks, and an Elite Red HD case.

Parting Thoughts:
Sometimes real life can surpass anything a scriptwriter can conjure up. Certainly, the occurrences in "Dog Day Afternoon" would seem like pure, exaggerated fiction to anyone who didn't know they had actually happened. Credit the filmmakers and stars, however, for bringing the events to life with such zest, such enthusiasm, and such broad appeal. Few fictional thrillers are as tense or as funny as this real-life recreation, and the HD-DVD's high-tech processing makes it all the more enjoyable.

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