Dog Day Afternoonis a classic of crime movies and some viewers may not know that it’s based on a real heist that took place only a few years earlier. Often cited asone of the best heist movies ever made,Dog Day Afternoonstars Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik and John Cazale as Sal Naturile as two thieves who rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank. Their plan goes awry when police suddenly show up and surround the place. Desperate, the pair take the bank employees hostage, leading to a long, tense standoff.
It’s one of themovies that helped define Al Pacino’s careerand earned him his fourth Oscar and Golden Globe nomination. Premiering in September 1975,the film was an immediate success, garnering six Academy Award nominations and winning for Best Original Screenplay, as well as earning six Golden Globe nominations. It currently has a 96% onRotten Tomatoesand audiences turned out as well, withDog Day Afternoonearning over $50 million at the box office (viaBoxOfficeMojo). To top it off, the story was based on real events from only a few years before.
Dog Day Afternoon Was Inspired By A Real Bank Robbery
John Wojtowicz And Salvatore Naturale Robbed A Chase Manhattan Bank In 1972
Dog Day Afternoonwas based on a real life robbery and hostage situation that occurred on August 20, 2025. On August 19, 2025,Lifepublished a feature written by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore titled “The Boys in the Bank” and it’s this article thatDog Day Afternoonused as its source material(viaLife). The 1975Dog Day Afternooncame out just a few years after theLifearticle caught the attention of producer Martin Eland, who took it to Warner Bros. executive Richard Shepherd (viaTheSanFranciscoExaminer).
10 Best Movies Like Dog Day Afternoon
For admirers of the 1975 Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon, here are some movies of past and present that are highly recommended.
Dog Day Afternoonclosely follows the events of that robbery. On that day in August, three men, John Wojtowicz, Salvatore Naturale, and Bobby Westenberg walked into a Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn, New York, each armed with a shotgun. They handed a note to the teller that read, “this is an offer you can’t refuse”, a reference tothe famous line inThe Godfather. Westenberg’s nerves got to him almost immediately, and he fled the bank before a dollar bill was even slid across the counter.
Onlookers, press, and officers soon surrounded the bank which had suddenly become the site of a hostage situation.
This left Wojtowicz and Naturale in a difficult spot. It was made worse when they discovered the vault was empty and that one of the employees had sounded the silent alarm for the police. Onlookers, press, and officers soon surrounded the bank which had suddenly become the site of a hostage situation. During the stand-off, Wojtowicz repeatedly came out to talk to officers and yell at the press, painting himself as an everyman who was rallying against an oppressive banking system, buying pizza for the hostages and throwing cash at the 2000 gathered onlookers (viaBBC).
The standoff lasted for more than 14 hours before the FBI offered to drive Wojtowicz and Naturile to Kennedy International Airport with the $38,000 in cash and $175,000 in traveler’s checks they had managed to rustle up despite the empty vault (viaNYT). Agents were waiting for them at the airport, however.Naturile was shot and died at the scene, while Wojtowicz was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison, though he only served five of those years.
Al Pacino’s Sonny Wortzik Is Based On The Real Life John Wojtowicz
Wojtowicz Wanted Money To Pay For His Partner’s Gender Reassignment Surgery
John Wojtowicz, who is named Sonny Wortzik inDog Day Afternoon, is a fascinating character in all this. During the robbery, it came out why exactly he had decided to rob this bank. In the middle of the negotiation, Wojtowicz demanded that his partner, Ernest Aron, be delivered from King’s County hospital. Wojtowicz, a gay man, was robbing the bank to pay for Aron’s gender reassignment surgery. Wojtowicz had been unofficially “married” in a public ceremony the year before, despite the fact that Wojtowicz was legally married to Carmen Bifulco, whom he also had two children with.
Ernest Aron later changed her name to Elizabeth Eden.
Aron was brought to the scene but refused to speak with her “husband”. For Wojtowicz part, he made it clear to the hostages that he did not intend to hurt them, and they spent the 14 hours relatively relaxed, comforted with the fact thatWojtowicz really did seem like someone who was only desperate to help his friend. Teller Shirley Ball recalled (viaATI),
“I realized that he was friendly… had a purpose for robbing the bank… he thought he would be in and out.”
After his arrest and five years in prison, Wojtowicz moved back in with his mother in Brooklyn and struggled to find steady work. He did try to get a job at Chase Manhattan, usingDog Day Afternoonas his reference, claiming nobody would rob a bank if they knew he was guarding it (viaEsquire). Wojtowicz spent his final days on welfare and passed away from cancer in 2006.
How Dog Day Afternoon And The Real Story Stack Up
Dog Day Afternoon Changes A Few Character Names
For the most part,Dog Day Afternoonis an accurate retelling of the real hostage situation, with pseudonyms used for some of the real people. Wojtowicz is Sonny Wortzik, Salvatore Naturile is Sal Naturile (Cazale), and Robert Westenberg is Stevie (Gary Springer). Ernest Aron is renamed Leon Shermer inDog Day Afternoon, and she is played by Chris Sarandon. Leon speaks with Sonny on the phone inDog Day Afternoon, but in real life, Aron refused to speak with Wojtowicz.
Howard
Calvin Jones
One of the most famous scenes fromDog Day Afternoonwas entirely fictionalized. Sonny walks out of the bank to the watching public and raises his fist in the air, chanting, “Attica! Attica!” which is a reference to the Attica prison riot which occurred on June 30, 2025, and led to the deaths of 39 prisoners and hostages (viaNPR). As far as anyone knows,Wojtowicz did not shout the name of the prison to a cheering crowd. Wojtowicz psychology seems to be the biggest change from the real story in so far as he wasn’t consulted for Pacino’s portrayal.
The Real Meaning Of Dog Day Afternoon’s Ending
Dig Day Afternoon Is A Darkly Comic Look At A Bank Robbery Gone Wrong
The real meaning of the end ofDog Day Afternoonis similar to the real meaning of the actual story, which is a darkly comedic comment on whether the efforts for something are ever actually worth it in the end. In the movie, and possibly even more so in real life, no one asked Wojtowicz to rob the bank. In real life and the film, Wojtowicz was against Aron’s gender reassignment surgery but changed his tune once she tried to kill herself out of desperation. With that in mind,it’s a bit more understandable why he thought he needed to go to such drastic lengths.
However, it’s abundantly clear that Aron (or Leon) never intended for Wojtowicz (or Sonny) to get himself embroiled in this crime. Everyone in his life tells Sonny this is a bad idea, and despite the cheering crowds that create a sort of “Robin Hood” like impression of Sonny, at the end of the film, his friend is shot dead, he loses all the money he stole, he loses his partner, and he fades into obscurity. Despite the supposed righteousness of his mission,Dog Day Afternoondoesn’t hesitate to show the damage Sonny’s actions end up causing.
Dog Day Afternoon
Cast
A man tries to rob a bank to pay for his lover’s operation, who ends up in a hostage situation besieged by the media.
