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The bank robbery movie has been done many times, but rarely has the city of New York been brought to life so aptly, so deftly, as it is in Dog Day Afternoon. Because I saw this after the 2006 thriller Inside Man, it was a little hard to separate where the homages from the latter began and the former’s quality ended. The biggest difference here is that Sonny and Sal aren’t so much threatening as bumbling. Though Sonny clearly worked in a bank (he’s not only smart enough to try and burn the registers the travelers’ checks are logged in, but he knows about other bank-specific procedures), he and Sal start off on the wrong foot when they miss the bigger haul at the beginning.

Though Sonny can sometimes get the upper hand (the infamous line “Attica!” comes from his savvy understanding of the crowd’s hatred for New York cops after a recent riot), he’s mostly unable to see reality coming right around the corner. We all know, watching any movie with a bank robbery, that the criminals almost never get away. When a bank robber such as Sonny makes demands of the cops, demands like a jet, the audience knows they aren’t going to get to fly anywhere, unless it’s a prison transport. The best movies of this kind make us forget that knowledge, and Dog Day Afternoon does an expert job of this. Partly because of how genuinely suspenseful some interactions are in the movie, and partly because I knew little of the true story or the film’s plot, I was pleasantly taken aback at the film’s climax.

Lumet was such a subtle director; his style was almost nonexistent but always present. Sweaty desperation, thy name is Lumet. Here, there’s no question that Sonny is the personification of this theme. His reasoning for robbing the bank is…well, I’m not going to spoil it if you’re not familiar with the film’s twists and turns. Suffice to say, his motivation is absolutely unexpected; even more, Lumet doesn’t reveal this motivation as some major shock (even though it is), letting it flow naturally. The acting in the film is typically impressive, not just because of the names involved but because Lumet was such an actor’s director. There’s a reason why the man worked with people including Pacino, Paul Newman, William Holden, Albert Finney, Fonda, and Rod Steiger.

Pacino is, of course, excellent here, revealing a bit of the manic intensity that’s become his calling card while showing tender emotional range. Cazale, best known as Fredo in The Godfather, is meant to be the more intense of the two robbers, but he’s just as coiled and jittery as Pacino is, only quieter. Charles Durning, always a treat, is great as the New York cop who starts off as Pacino’s only tie to the outside world; their tete-a-tetes are two of the best sequences here. A young Chris Sarandon (the future Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride) plays Leon, who represents more than you may think to Sonny. The two characters have one telephone scene, but the sadness and frustration on both ends is not only impressive, but genuinely surprising in a film that begins as a robbery.

Dog Day Afternoon has had a fine reputation since it opened in 1975. One can only hope its quality will live on now that Lumet has passed on. Frankly, among the more undervalued movies of Lumet’s career, I’d almost say The Verdict ought to be on the same plateau as Network, 12 Angry Men, and this film. Don’t get me wrong: Dog Day Afternoon is great, one of the best films of both Lumet’s and Pacino’s filmographies. But this is also a movie that, when you go into it, you know is supposed to be great. I can say this much about Dog Day Afternoon that I don’t often say about supposed classics: it meets the hype, never disappointing. That’s rarer and rarer these days.

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