Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
Midnight Cowboy moves beyond realism into an archetypal tale of the Big City destroying dreamers. Joe and Ratso, like Of Mice and Men's George and Lenny, are quintessential failed, lower-class, buddy-dreamers.
– Michael Wilmington,
Chicago Tribune,
2 Sep 2014
fresh:
I cannot recall a more marvelous pair of acting performances in any one film.
– Gene Siskel,
Chicago Tribune,
18 Jan 2013
fresh:
Midnight Cowboy's peep-show vision of Manhattan lowlife may no longer be shocking, but what is shocking, in 1994, is to see a major studio film linger this lovingly on characters who have nothing to offer the audience but their own lost souls.
– Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly,
7 Sep 2011
fresh:
In this film the scenery is lovely and only the human race is vile.
– Robert J. Landry,
Variety,
30 Jan 2008
rotten:
The acting, showy and instinctual, is most of the movie; the visual style is too forced and chicly distended to let the drama acquire much natural life of its own.