If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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

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 robbed this bank." T-shirt Dog wears in front of the infamous bank.The Dog is a documentary tribute to the genius of Al Pacino. Although it's not at all about Pacino, his depiction of Brooklyn-Italian John Wojtowicz in Dog Day Afternoon, who robbed a branch bank in the summer of 1972 to fund the sex-change operation of his lover, was so spot on that, as eccentric and wild as John is, Pacino's performance was constantly on my mind.The doc, filled with repetitive declamations from John about his willingness to chew up life, is most interesting for me briefly when his first wife, Carmen, hints that John may have robbed the Brooklyn bank because of debt to the mob, not just the sex change. Wish I could have seen that back-story because the film mostly lets John ramble on.Alas, the film belongs to Republican Vietnam vet John, whose arc moves to and past his defining role in the botched robbery. While he claims to have married as many as four men, we watch him age in a manic pose, always talking, usually defending his bizarre bisexual exploits, seeming never to step out of his rebel role, fighting and eventually losing to cancer.Even prison can't dull his enthusiasm for the bizarre sexuality that has been his signature. It is the '70's after all, when the Gay Activists Alliance was born. For John, it's a chance to find partners more than sympathy with the emerging Greenwich Village Stonewall initiative. The doc pays little attention to the actual robbery (I suppose it would be futile to try to match Sydney Lumet's superb film adaptation) and chooses to emphasize Dog's bravado and his close relationship with his mother, Terry (amateur psych sleuths can already smell Oedipus if not Freud). She is one tough little lady, enduring his increasingly strange actions with a love and equanimity suggesting she could also be the subject of a doc. It's doubtful how she could be held even partially responsible for a man who robs a bank and takes hostages.Dog embodies self absorption and willful violation of civility that eventually make him much less likable than the odd Brooklyn punk he started out as. Thanks goodness for the archival news footage and Al Pacino.

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!