From the Edge of Dementia

#4 AL PACINO as Sonny Wortzik in DOG DAY AFTERNOON  (1975)

"Playing an inept bank robber stealing money to pay for his boyfriend's sex-change operation, Pacino turned someone only a mother could love into someone audiences did, too.  Director Sidney Lumet wanted the actor to play Sonny as close to himself as possible, so that what could have been freakish doesn't seem so outrageous at all  --and Pacino, alternately tender and terrifying, strutting and nervously incompetent, remains grounded in the reality of this true-life tale.  In the improvised scene where Sonny talks on the phone to the man and woman he calls his wives, Pacino's so raw and exhausted that you feel like someone should tell him it's only a movie."

Courtesy of Premiere Magazine

(Editor's Note:  Yeah.  This is a bad-ass movie).

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