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Poster for Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy

For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it.

1969 · 1h 53m · R Drama
Directed by John Schlesinger

Seen it?

Overview

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.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
89%
Tomatometer
Fresh

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
Fresh

I cannot recall a more marvelous pair of acting performances in any one film.

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
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
Fresh

In this film the scenery is lovely and only the human race is vile.

Robert J. Landry, Variety
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.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

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