The Dog

Saw this film at the New York Film Festival. Wasn't totally sure what to expect. I had never seen "Dog Day Afternoon" but loved "The French Connection" and films set in the "grittier" New York of the 70s and 80s.

As a recent New York transplant I've become increasingly fascinated with the city and it's not so distant past.

Anyway that's the background. First off I'll say that "The Dog" really took me by surprise. What a great look inside the life of a really fascinating character.

Hilarious, vulgar but unapologetic the film fully captures a very very complicated and contradictory character. Not really knowing the background of "The Dog" I was surprised at how much the film is also about gay life and the gay "revolution" that was taking place in NYC at the time. Presented without politics or nostalgia the film really reminded me that before the recent strides gays and lesbians have made - the path towards acceptance and equal rights was paved by some really wacky - and not entirely savory - misfits, outcasts and maniacs!!

After watching "The Dog" I went out and rented "Dog Day Afternoon"...really fantastic film. Having seen that film I can say that "The Dog" is a must see for fans of "Dog Day Afternoon" and lovers of NYC!

Personally, I think Dog Day Afternoon is the greatest American film of the 20th century. It clicks for me like few films do. Naturally, it was easy for me to invest in The Dog about the real Sonny, John Wojtowicz. One thing I didn't expect was that the documentary would be so wickedly funny. Just like how Chris Smith's American Movie feels like it teeters on mockumentary, The Dog piles on classic one liners by people who don't realize just how funny they are. Wojtowicz is a hell of a character. He's repulsive, yet endearing, I can see how people are put off this film as he dares you to leave before its over in its opening seconds. He's a total control freak, offering saying action and cut for the directors. Here we have this guy bulging with fat and mouth full of rotten teeth admitting he's a pervert and motivated by sex. It's incredible what that one inert desire propels us into doing. The film adds layers upon layers of contradiction, fleshing out the character of John, the way he wants to be seen and the way he would never want to be seen. He's almost too good to be true.

For the first hour, it's brilliantly entertaining, earning belly laughs for the absurdity of the anecdotes. Even if they're embellishing in lies, the situations themselves and especially the delivery are still amusing. It's a really dense documentary, painting a vivid picture with a great soundtrack to match. While Dog Day Afternoon is a microcosm of these types of farcical events that happen in America, this documentary emphasises the man against the system aspect, and for a fan of Sidney Lumet's films, there's great real life footage of the fateful event that puts it into perspective. Then the film gets devastating as it details the deterioration of Wojtowicz, however much of a bad person he may be. I simply can't believe this film is being so criminally overlooked, the time put into this is phenomenal considering John died in 2006. The directors must have been sitting on this footage for a long time. I'm so glad they got to share it with us and make a film that does justice to the original masterpiece. Bravo. I'm head over heels for this gripping, hilarious, thorough, thoughtful and heartfelt doc.

9/10

I love Dog Day Afternoon. Granted, I haven't seen it in years, but I think it's a great film. What a surprise to see that the real-life events that it's based on are actually even more interesting. This really could have been a feature film, but I'm so glad that instead it's a documentary. John Wojtowicz is an even more interesting person than his character in Dog Day Afternoon. Really great job balancing out many of his life events and not trying to cram too much in and still leaving a big emotional impact. Great stuff, and I highly recommend it. It can be highly funny and also have a big emotional impact. Heartbreaking without being sappy.

Often very funny, occasionally quite sad documentary on the life and hard times of "The Dog", John Wojtowicz, the real life man played by Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon" – the hapless bank robber who held up a NYC bank to pay for his lover's sex change operation and (first) to get her released from a psychiatric hospital.

Wojtowicz is affable and funny, completely un self-conscious about his rather insane life, his voracious, intense and sometimes confusing sexual and romantic appetites, his love of the spotlight. But there are also moments when we realize this likable eccentric does have a side that is closer to dangerously crazy and delusional than to simply 'off-beat' and that tension is one of the fascinating tears that run through the man and the film.

It's also clear that John to a certain extent is also playing the role of 'John' for the cameras, which adds to the humor of the film (he has a very funny habit of saying things like 'action' and 'cut' to the documentary camera that is filming him), but also asks deeper questions about fleeting fame and how it can distort one's personality and perceptions of self and reality.

Perhaps the most lovely thing about "The Dog" is how truly un-judgmental it seems. While it celebrates the humor in the absurdities of John's life story and his person (and those around him), it never feels like we're watching a freak show that sniggers at it's subjects from a distance. These may be odd people, but the film never seems to forget that they are people first and odd second, or that we're all odd in one way or another. I feel like the filmmakers genuinely liked John. It's a complex and rich portrait of a very unique man, sort of a hero, sort of a villain, sort of crazy, sort of scary, sort of wonderful.

The true story of the real guy that Al Pacino made legendary in the bank robbing thriller Dog Day Afternoon...

The real guy, first name John, not Sonny, isn't playing with a full deck, and as he talks about going from a "warmonger" Goldwater conservative to a peacenik McCarthy democrat during and after the Vietnam war, first believing the war and later hating the war, he's forgetting that Goldwater lost to Johnson, and it was John F Kennedy and Johnson who started the Vietnam war, and Johnson who proudly sustained it, but, again, not a full deck here... and any chance a documentary can blame Republicans for everything, they'll do so...

Also, while he did kinda look like Pacino or De Niro in his youth, he is very, very hard to look at (filmed six years before his death around 2000) and the talking-dead doc camera is just way too close to his face which includes horribly damaged teeth, sickly chapped lips and a giant grotesque sty on top of his eyelid... He's just gross...

For this documentary to fit into how docs are now, he has to brag about being a gay revolutionary instead of a career criminal lowlife who robbed a bank and pointed guns at human beings...

It's very doubtful he robbed a bank with a young dangerous hoodlum (who was younger than John Cazale in the movie, and not quietly endearing but loud and scary) just for the sex change of his boyfriend to girlfriend...

He robbed the bank to have a load of money... He didn't just take the amount needed for a sex change... He wanted a lot of money the fast way...

But like all left wing docs, a genuine scumbag is turned into a kind of anti-hero, which isn't the doc's fault since Lumet's classic Dog Day Afternoon did the same thing, only it was entertaining, and shockingly the FBI are also made to look decently enough....

Overall THE DOG is an interesting viewing and a way to pass the time, it's just a bit too idolizing of someone who was a criminal and continued to be a criminal. But, that's show biz...

The truth is, though... neither Pacino or Lumet wanted anything to do with this kook, ever, even when he got out of and back into jail for the rest of his troubled life.