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DOG DAY AFTERNOON
January 8, 2018  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 2:30 a.m. ET

 

Another true-crime story shown tonight on TCM, this one is shown late enough that it requires either a time-shifting recording device or insomnia. Either way, it’s worth catching. This 1975 movie is directed by Sidney Lumet, right before he did Network, and has the same sort of crackling urgency and unchecked irrationality as that other great film. Al Pacino stars as a man who attempts a bank robbery in Brooklyn in order to fund his lover’s sex-change operation. John Cazale, in one of his few, equally powerful screen appearances, plays a bank robber lending support, at least at first. But after a while, it’s Pacino’s high-intensity performance all the way, and direction by Lumet that makes the entire movie seem like a documentary. And it was based on fact.

 
 
 
 
 
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