Sorry, Nope

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2014)

Sorry, but as a young man I watched friends and strangers live this scenario. The two male leads are fictionalized fantasies of the personalities of people that would have lived through this. Losing a bunch of weight to play a role does not make the performance real, or "lived in", or stellar.
Don't believe the hype of this film, it is only a film, a vehicle for people to further their careers.
The lead characters don't seem to live in, or inhabit the true nature of people facing their demise, instead it seems to be a vanity play for accolades and publicity. Sorry, nope, this film's reflection of this time never happened. This is not how real people were conducting themselves, this isn't how they acted, this film did not portray their human motivations and emotions accurately. This was a film that tells a dramatic story about a time when people died from a disease, and prejudice and incorrect information was everywhere, not a proper reflection of the reality.
Lest you think I am cynical, think again. The reality I witnessed in the eyes of people who were dying, who scrambled for anything to save their lives, was not portrayed in this movie. This film is nothing more than a dramatic story, about a real time in human history.
Let's not hype these performances by the leads as exemplary acting, because no person I met in those days ever acted like these two leads. But if you are a director, and never met real people who lived this reality, and then sought to make an "actor's vehicle" drama, -- you would create characters like these, characters that are neither accurate in their human condition, psychological motivation, or reality.
And if, as I suspect, there are some folks involved in this production who did live this reality, I would bet that when asked if this movie reflected the reality of the time they would answer likely answer, no, not at all.