In the Midnight Cowboy, the gullible Joe Buck, who thinks himself a handsome and overpowering to the women, leaves his work in Texas and decides to start a new life in New York and gathers a fortune which dreams it, but he completely finds the opposite and finds himself living in the deserted building with a con man named Ratso, then, together start to work Joe's job.
"Midnight Cowboy" is an exquisite time capsule. The film is filled with dark social and political commentary. Only through his problematic friendship with Ratzo can Buck reclaim his humanity.
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.
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.
Some of the attitudes in Midnight Cowboy -- especially toward women -- don't wear the years well, but the performances by Hoffman and Jon Voight remain electric.
