Watch The Dog For Free

Waste of time

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

'Dog Day Afternoon', starring Al Pacino, is a great film about a bank robbery; but in fact, it's based on a true story and one arguably even more bizarre than the version told in the film. However, John Wojtowicz, the real life robber, was a man who spent the rest of his life attempting to milk his own history for money, which slightly diffuses the impact of this documentary, which is less an act of uncovering a story and more one of simply turning up and listening to an extended bout of self-promotion. There's still some interest in a tale that combines an odd combination of radical sexuality and bank robbery, while John's mother is a truly remarkable woman. What's also remarkable is how closely actor John Cazale resembled the dead robber Sal.

The subject of this documentary, which purports to describe the actual events behind the Al Pacino film, Dog Day Afternoon, is himself such a colossally self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, clueless idiot, that he manages to make the fantastic story of the world's most bizarre bank robbery... incredibly boring. John Wojtowicz, who robbed a New York City bank in 1975 to pay for a sex change operation for his boyfriend, takes up 90% of the screen time in this tedious and self-serving retelling of his botched robbery, in which one of his cohorts was killed. Utterly remorseless, Wojtowicz is hard to look at, and harder to listen to. However, the newsreel scenes of a vanished New York, and the recollections of some of the New York characters who entered Wojtowicz's orbit in the course of the robbery, make this otherwise dismal and dishonest documentary worth watching. If you have not yet seen Dog Day Afternoon, I suggest you see that first. I suspect the fictionalized account in that film is a truer version than what you will hear from John Wojtowicz.

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.

Some people will do anything to get attention. John Wojtowicz - whose "dramatic love story" inspired "Dog Day Afternoon" starring Al Pacino - blurs the line between a man who would do anything for love and a man who would do anything for a great story to impress people with."The Dog" documents the love life of the late John Wojtowicz (March 9, 1945 - January 2, 2006), a man who is not afraid to say what he thinks - and what he feels. He describes his first gay experience in great detail (while he was a self-proclaimed Republican in the army), and has no shame in revealing his deep sexual hunger - for men, for women, for trans people. It made little difference.Read my full review here: http://tinyurl.com/orrbgdk