Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Review: Midnight Cowboy

I finally managed to download a copy of ‘Midnight Cowboy’, which is one of my fav movies. Lucky me, this time I got the uncensored version.

Some background before I review this movie. First of all, ‘Midnight Cowboy’ was the first and only X-rated movie to win the ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award. It also won ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Screenplay’. Dustin Hoffman’s salary cost half the 3 million dollar budget. Arsehole.

This is a heartbreaking movie. Joe Buck (Jon Voight) is a troubled young man from Texas. He has a severe Odiepus Complex stemming from a complex relationship with his grandmother, a traumatic failed relationship (which is never really fully explained) with a loony girl and a severe fear of religion. Luckily for him, he makes up for all that with good looks and charm.

So he dresses like a cowboy and takes a bus to New York, where he hopes to earn a living as a hustler(a man-whore catering to rich lonely old ladies). He hooks up with a crippled low-life conman named Ratso (Hoffman) who cheats him out of his last 20 bucks. Things do not workout and pretty soon he is homeless.

A partucularly disturbing scene is where Joe Buck gets desperate and prostitutes himself standing outside a gay cinema. A bespectacled young student engages his service and blows him. In order to climax, Joe Buck goes into his head searching for flashbacks with his former gf and grandmother. In the final scene we see the student puking because Joe Buck came in his mouth (ugh!). The student has no money to pay, so all of that trauma came to naught for poor Joe Buck.

He meets Ratso again and almosts beats him up. But Ratson offers him a place to stay (an abandoned building with no water or electricity). Together they try to hustle and score. Ratso’s dream is to move to Florida where it’s always warm and you can have coconuts everyday. Pretty soon, both of them become good friends.

When things finally start to get better for Joe Buck (meaning he has paying clients), Ratso falls ill and can’t walk. Instead of getting a doctor, Ratso asks that Joe put him on a bus to Florida. To get the money for the trip, Joe Buck plays gay man-whore one last time, but this time he beats up the client and steals his money.

During the bus ride, Ratso wets his pants. Joe Buck turns into a mother/father figure and carries Ratso around, cleans him and buys him new clothes to wear. Unfortunately, Ratso dies on the bus just as they are about to reach their destination. In the final scene, Joe Buck hugs Ratso tightly.

A truly timeless classic tale.

interesting……

is this where you got your name from ? and, what illness makes this guy die so rapidly ?

em. though very interesting, it isnt really a review man, BLOODY SPOILER, i was thinking of watching it until i came till the end where he gets on the bus. darn.

Parralel_gurl > in other news, we also learn that Jon Voight the ‘Midnight Cowboy’ is also the father of Angelina Jolie

Aneki > You could say this was one of the sources of my nick. I have no idea what ratso dies off. They never say.

Andrian > hehehe, go watch it. I left alot of good scenes out. You gotta catch the one where Midnight Cowboy has to pay an old bitch instead after sex.

How long did it take you to download it?

darren > I dunno man. I usually pick stuff I want to download at night. Then I just leave it alone. The next day after I get back from work at night it’s usually finished downloading. This movie was 690MB.