Midnight Cowboy

Joe Buck leaves a small Texas town for New York City, expecting to make money as a hustler catering to wealthy women. The city proves harsher than he imagined: he is mocked, cheated and left with nothing. He meets Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, a limping con man in poor health who talks his way into managing Joe and shares his rundown lodgings. The two men, one naive and hopeful, the other hardened and sick, form an unlikely friendship as they struggle to survive in Manhattan, clinging to Ratso's dream of escaping to Florida.

John Schlesinger directed the film, the third in the sequence of features he made, following Billy Liar and Darling, and preceding Sunday Bloody Sunday. Waldo Salt wrote the screenplay, and Jerome Hellman produced it. Dustin Hoffman plays Ratso and Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, with Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro and Barnard Hughes among the credited cast of sixty-two.

Made for about 4 million dollars, the film took roughly 53 million dollars worldwide, a strong return relative to its cost. On IMDb it holds 7.8 out of 10 from about 131,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.5 from around 1,683 votes. A critics' rating of 8.7 from 114 reviews places it higher with reviewers than with general audiences.