“Midnight Cowboy stars Jon Voight as Joe Buck: tall, tanned and beautiful but he’s a man with no one, passing through the script of a wretched life. Leaving behind more than one person’s quota of dreadful luck in small-town Texas – abandoned by a mother, raised by a grandmother and her creepy partner – memories float through his mind, with flashbacks of a horrific rape of himself and his girlfriend at the hands of a local gang. Joe’s promiscuity, a calling card for sexual abuse, is also his escape. He plans to milk those rich ladies of New York, and turn the tables on his sexual exploitation.
“However, a few months in the city leave him sharp-cheekboned and pale. His unconventional relationship with Ratso (Enrico Salvatore Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman) is the closest thing to love that Joe has had in his life – it is no irony that this partnership is never sexual. Offering Joe food and shelter and cleaning his clothes, Ratso is the only one who places Joe’s needs above his own sexual gratification.
“Midnight Cowboy, directed by John Schlesinger, is an emotional ride through an unlucky life and very worth watching.” - The Guardian