Film
Beyond the Canon: Set It Off + Dog Day Afternoon
- 5:30PM
Dir. F. Gary Gray.
With Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox
1996, 124min, 35mm
A quartet of brilliant black actresses get an all-too-rare chance to shine in this female-powered heist thriller, in which four struggling women stick it to the man by pulling a string of bank robberies. With action sequences that pack an impressive jolt, Friday director F. Gary Gray adds a pointed layer of racial and class commentary by delving into the circumstances that drive each woman to life as an outlaw.
Dir. Sidney Lumet
With Al Pacino, John Cazale, Penelope Allen
1975, 125min, 35mm
On a sweltering August day, novice criminals Sonny (Pacino) and Sal (Cazale) attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank, a situation that spirals into a tense police standoff and a three-ring media circus. Sidney Lumet’s NYC classic contains the definitive Pacino performance—wired, unpredictable—and flavorful footage of summer-in-the-city 70s Brooklyn: you can practically feel the heat rising from the rubble.
Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off (1996) occupy a similar position as transgressors. Both hijack the generic heist program, subverting the conventions that gave it its solid and enduringly fertile structure.
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