For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten 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.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.9/10
IMDb: 7.8/10
Letterboxd: 4.15/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Metacritic: 79
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
John Schlesinger
Production
Florin Productions, Jerome Hellman Productions, United Artists
Cast
Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Gilman Rankin, Gary Owens, T. Tom Marlow, George Eppersen, Al Scott, Linda Davis, J.T. Masters, Arlene Reeder, Georgann Johnson, Jonathan Kramer, Anthony Holland, Bob Balaban
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A landmark New York character study that turns a hustler-buddy setup into something aching, funny, and devastating. Its mix of grit, tenderness, sexual ambiguity, and urban disillusionment still feels sharp, and the performances give it real emotional force.
Best for
viewers who like bleak but humane 1970s-era drama
fans of outsider friendships and odd-couple stories
people interested in queer subtext and sexual ambiguity in classic cinema
viewers drawn to New York as a pressure-cooker setting
fans of performance-driven character studies
Skip if
you want a straightforward plot with clean moral lines
you dislike bleak endings or emotional discomfort
you prefer modern pacing and polished production values
you are sensitive to depictions of exploitation, poverty, and sexual coercion
Overview
Midnight Cowboy is one of the great American down-and-out movies, a film that finds comedy, desperation, and tenderness in the same alleyway. What begins as a naive dream of easy money in New York becomes a bruising portrait of two damaged men clinging to each other because the city has left them nowhere else to go.
Worth noting
The movie’s power comes from its contradictions: sleazy and compassionate, funny and miserable, intimate and lonely. It captures a very specific late-1960s urban malaise, but the emotional core is timeless — the need to be seen, the fear of failure, and the way companionship can look like salvation even when it cannot save you.
Bottom line
Schlesinger’s direction keeps the film restless and alive, while the lead performances make the relationship feel messy, vulnerable, and unforgettable. It is not an easy watch, but it is an essential one: a classic that still feels risky, strange, and deeply human.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Paul (Douglas Reese) (5★) · 6192 likes
Can we stop excluding Midnight Cowboy from recognition as a queer love story?
The basic outline of Midnight Cowboy is this: a young Texan man (played by Jon Voight) decides he wants to move to New York City and become a hustler. His main aspiration in life? To find a rich woman and live off of her and simply aim to please her. He moves, he’s stuck in the city, and he doesn’t find the success that he saw in… more
Charlotte Thornton (5★) · 6067 likes
do you think right wing homophobe jon voight is aware that he played a gay guy once? should someone tell him?
Matt Singer (4★) · 5384 likes
“I’m walking’ here!” became famous but the best line in this movie is “Hey fella, you fell.”
ykg (5★) · 4008 likes
Men will literally become hustlers in New York instead of going to therapy
Madison 🎭 (4★) · 3619 likes
fellas is it gay to con a man, invite him to live with you, help him make money via prostitution, and die in his arms?