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| Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY Year: 1969 Rating: ***** |
A simplistic but mostly naive young man from Texas, Joe Buck, ironically becomes a cowboy after deciding to leave his hometown, headed to the last place that that kind of legendary hero exists, New York City, as every frame of MIDNIGHT COWBOY means something: starting from a sunlit drive-in to a public shower where Joe drops the soap...
An obvious nod for an inevitable detour within a disturbing, almost sadistic character-driven story that's also bright and cheerful, particularly when initially centered on Jon Voight's title character, who shows enough humanity and vulnerability in what he's hiding as first-billed sidekick Dustin Hoffman's crippled con-man hustler, Ratso Rizzo, only seems helpful up front...
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| Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
A tattered and swarthy, street savvy con-man who walks in a permanent, unguided shuffle that, alongside the handsome, tall blond Texan, make for perhaps the most bizarre odd couple of top-grade exploitation cinema: in one of the most well-deserved films to win Best Director (John Schlesinger) and Best Picture (although the most famous movie cowboy of all time would take Best Actor)...
Curbing a seemingly endless gust of serious and often painstaking hard-luck roadblocks (from con artist Sylvia Miles to street preacher apartment dweller John C. McGiver) are genuinely funny moments centered on and around the unlikely duo, teamed-up after what feels like fully-conceived vignettes...
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| Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo with Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
Including the initial bus trip; a clumsy attempt at hustling; and the doomed yet determined partnership before a sharp, frostbit winter cuts into Ratso's idyllic reverie of sunny Florida while the desperate, starving creature of bleak and mysterious New York City (even haunting under a heavy dose of psychedelia) formidably reigns...
By the end, what the audience has experienced, and the characters suffered through, can't reach the unique form of dark, tangible reality that no movie has yet to challenge, or equal: A timeless celebration of futile optimism.
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| Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| Dustin Hoffman in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| M. Emmett Walsh in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| Bus Ride from MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| Joan Murphy in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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| John C. McGiver and Jon Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY |
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