Texas greenhorn Joe Buck arrives in New York for the first time. Preening himself as a real ‘hustler’, he finds that he is the one getting ‘hustled’ until he teams up with a down-and-out but resilient outcast named Ratso Rizzo. The initial ‘country cousin meets city cousin’ relationship deepens. In their efforts to bilk a hostile world rebuffing them at every turn, this unlikely pair progress from partners in shady business to comrades. Each has found his first real friend.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)
  • Rating: (43,857 votes)
  • Taglines:Whatever you hear about Midnight Cowboy is true. » For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it. (1980 re-release) »
  • Runtime:113 minutes
  • Director: John Schlesinger
  • Country:USA
  • Actors:
    Ratso
    Dustin Hoffman
    Joe Buck
    Jon Voight
    Cass
    Sylvia Miles
    Mr. O'Daniel
    John McGiver
    Shirley
    Brenda Vaccaro
    Towny
    Barnard Hughes
    Sally Buck - Texas
    Ruth White
    Annie - Texas
    Jennifer Salt
    Woodsy Niles - Texas (as Gil Rankin)
    Gilman Rankin
    Little Joe - Texas
    T. Tom Marlow
  • Genre:Drama
  • Producers:
    Jerome Hellman
    producer  
    Kenneth Utt
    associate producer  
  • Plot: Texas greenhorn Joe Buck arrives in New York for the first time. Preening himself as a real 'hustler', he finds that he is the one getting 'hustled' until he teams up with a down-and-out but resilient outcast named Ratso Rizzo. The initial 'country cousin meets city cousin' relationship deepens. In their efforts to bilk a hostile world rebuffing them at every turn, this unlikely pair progress from partners in shady business to comrades. Each has found his first real friend. Written by alfiehitchie
Midnight Cowboy
  • User's comment:Much better than expected by MovieAddict2011

    I sat down to watch "Midnight Cowboy" thinking it would be another overrated '60s/'70s movie. Some of my favorite films come from the '70s, in the same vein as "Midnight Cowboy" ("Taxi Driver," "Mean Streets," "Panic in Needle Park," etc.) but there are many, many overrated ones as well that have gained strong reputations amongst critics for being groundbreaking - unfortunately a vast majority of them don't hold up as well today. I sort of feel this way about "Easy Rider." (Although it, too, is one of my favorites.)

    So, I didn't expect much from "Midnight Cowboy" but got a lot back. It's a touching story, well-made and well-told with some of the best performances of all time. Dustin Hoffman, as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, gives one of his best - it's a bit funny at times (he sounds like a cartoon character when he speaks - maybe because of the Lenny/"Simpsons" connection), but Hoffman is entirely convincing. Half of the film's budget went towards his paycheck as he was just becoming a major star in Hollywood. Opposite him is the second-billed Jon Voight as Joe Buck, the "cowboy" who travels North to the Big Apple in the hopes of becoming a male prostitute. Soon his naive ways land him in trouble and he pairs up with a crippled scam artist named "Ratso" - who offers to become Joe's "manager" for a certain percentage of profits.

    The movie is quite long at two hours but never really seems very long. Some films can tend to drag, especially some of the films that were made in the '70s because (as it's been said in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls") the directors were the stars of the movies in the 1970s and occasionally they got a bit too infatuated with their material, going on too long examining characters/scenes/etc. that aren't important. Just about the only scene I felt was a bit too long and unnecessary was the drug party - it makes the film seem extremely outdated (similar to the drug odysseys in "Easy Rider") and really harms its flow because it's not needed.

    Other than that, "Midnight Cowboy" is an almost flawless motion picture. I was pleasantly surprised. It does have its flaws (flashbacks are a bit tacky and never used as well as they could have been, for instance) and some of the scenes are a bit uneasy (such as the gay movie theater sequence) but if you can handle its content "Midnight Cowboy" is a truly great motion picture, an uncompromising examination of life on the streets in the late '60s/early '70s. It's a depressing movie, yes, and by today's standards might seem a bit outdated and heavy on the liberal perspective of "life is horrible, etc."...but I still love it and particularly the extremely touching ending will stay with me for a long, long time.

    Highly recommended. One of the best films of the '70s. (It was technically released in late 1969 but I'd still categorize it as a 1970s film. It also won the Best Picture Oscar, being the first - and only - X-rated motion picture to do so. It was later re-rated R on appeal.)

    4.5/5


  • Quotes: Joe Buck: I only get carsick on boats. Shirley: You fell. Hey fella, you fell. Ratso Rizzo: You know, in my own place, my name ain't Ratso. I mean, it just so happens that in my own place my name is Enrico Salvatore Rizzo.
  • Also known as: Perdidos en la noche (Argentina), Perdidos en la noche (Mexico), Perdidos en la noche (Peru), Perdidos en la noche (Venezuela), Asphalt-Cowboy (Austria), Asphalt-Cowboy (West Germany), Macadam cowboy (Canada - French title), Macadam cowboy (France - imdb display title), Éjféli cowboy (Hungary - imdb display title), Asfalt Cowboy (Norway), Asfaltcowboy (Norway - TV title), Cowboy Shel Hatzot (Israel - Hebrew title), Cowboy de medianoche (Spain), Cowboy de mitjanit (Spain - Catalan title), Geceyarisi kovboyu (Turkey - Turkish title), Keskiyön cowboy (Finland), Mayonaka no kâbôi (Japan), Midnight Cowboy (Denmark), Nocny kowboj (Poland), O Cowboy da Meia-Noite (Portugal), O cow boy tou mesonyktiou (Greece - transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title), O cowboy tou mesonyhtiou (Greece - reissue title), Perdidos na Noite (Brazil), Ponocni kauboj (Serbia), Un uomo da marciapiede (Italy),

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