MIDNIGHT COWBOY
[Spoilers]
A film review by Ahmed I Shibab
Copyright 1996 Ahmed I Shibab
RATING: **** (out of ****)
This "dumb" cowboy blondie who thinks he is a `darn' good loverboy, decides to leave his dusty ol' town somewhere in Texas and go to New York. He puts on his beloved Cowboy attire and off he hops on the next New York coach.
When he arrives to New York, he immediately sets out to play Mr Playboy thinking he is the best `darn' `stud' in the whol'o' New York City. Obviously he fails.
He meets the 'cripple' Rico (Dustin Hoffman, who is terrifically good) in a bar. Rico has a leg that is paralysed from the knee down, so he walks in a peculiar way. Rico is a thief and wants to get some money off this 'rich' dumb Cowboy. He cheats our Cowboy out of $20 through a somewhat detailed routine and disappears.
Soon, our cowboy runs out of money: he gets kicked out of his hotel, and starts getting hungry. Walking through the city, with "Everybody's talkin'" playing in the background (oh, and his prided techno transistor radio in hand), he spots Rico in a cafe.
Rico, half-scared, pours out all the money in his pocket. 60 filthy cents. Our cowboy, hungry, is forgiving. He is glad he found someone he knows. Rico offers to make it up for him. And he invites him to his place. And what a filthy, cold place it is. Our cowboy falls asleep instantly in the (junk) bed. When he finally wakes (jumps?) up, he finds Rico looking at him. "You wanna cup'a'coffee?" Rico asks in his friendly, sleazy, somewhat-childish manner while he smokes on a ciggy.
"What're you? A goddamn faggot? What do you want from me? Where are my shoes? What did you do to them?"
But all his doubts turn out to be unfounded. Rico really has a heart. Together, they live in the junk apartment and almost freeze to death. Rico is convinced that the best place to be is Florida, where the sun shines beautifully and there are lots of coconut trees. But he falls sick and is convinced that his cure is to go to Florida.
"We will soon be in Miami" is the last sentence uttered in this film and what a shocking, moving end of a film it is. The classic theme music: "Midnight Cowboy" helps bring about the feeling of attachment that most viewers will experience towards the end of the film. Whether the attachment is to the two main characters or to their dreams, is probably as debatable as whether it was the acting or the direction that makes this film so memorable.
Review written 2 April, 1996. -----------------------------
Please supply me with feedback, as this is the first time I am posting to this newsgroup. -- ** Ahmed I Shihab, Research Student, Department of Computing, Imperial College, 180 Queen's Gate, London, UK 171-594 8381 ========= http://www-asds.doc.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/ais ==========
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews