Review: Dallas Buyers Club

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2013)

Since before the start of the new millennium until just after 2010, Matthew McConaughey's body of work was just that, a body that worked well on the screen for so many of the aimless, brainless onslaught of romantic/comedy disasters, in which he played the lead. In 1996, McConaughey played Jake Tyler Brigance in Joel Schumacher's A Time To Kill. Hailed as the best performance of his career, it seemed like, critically, that was the closest the actor would get to any praise. In 2011, McConaughey took the lead in Brad Furman's The Lincoln Lawyer, a by-the-number crime/mystery, where, McConaughey was able to flex some of his acting muscles as opposed to abdomen muscles. Since then, in what has been the most sudden and misunderstood acting turn in recent memory, McConaughey has reinvented his career and is continuing to be casted as a serious actor with serious acting skills. While the Texan acting inspiration has remolded his career in a time span that puts to shame that of Downey Jr. and Travolta, one of McConaughey's unflinching signature acting staples is his bold and proud Texan accent. And while I can't really imagine how a cowboy like himself was cast in Christopher Nolan's upcoming science fiction Interstellar, McConaughey and his accent were surely a match made in heaven for his role as the slowly weathering and dying HIV/AIDS patient Ron Woodruff. For Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey and his accent worked exceptionally well. Quebecois director Jean-Marc Vallee helms McConaughey as Ron Woodruff; a rugged, homophobic, ultra- macho, bull-riding, money throwing, playboy with no accord to anyone. Woodruff, a money hustling, chance taking electrician juggles his fortune, his luck, his women, and his job to make ends meet and live a somewhat fulfilling life. It isn't until an unexpected accident at work that leaves Woodruff hospitalized, giving him no choice but to make a difference in his life and the lives of many others. Upon learning of his recent HIV positive diagnostics and short thirty day life expectancy time span, Woodruff, reluctant to die, uses his hustling, smooth-talking, greasing ways to secure him a new, untested medicine to prolong the spread of HIV, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved AZT. After consuming an uncontrolled amount of AZT, the only legal drug that was available at the time in the United States, all the while, still abusing his substances, Woodruff has a close encounter with death. Coming to the morbid realization that the ATZ was depleting his longevity, he enlists the help of a disgraced doctor (Griffin Dunne) and together bring unapproved anti-viral treatments to the U.S illegally. What starts off as a simple economic money tapping market venture, Woodruff, along the way, comes to the realization that his efforts to help others, are actually working. Enlisting the help of fellow HID/AIDS victim Rayon (Jared Leto), the two start the Dallas Buyers Club, an alternative treatment centre for paying members that pits Woodruff in a gestating face-to-face with the FDA and other pharmaceutical companies. As the clientele grows thanks to Rayon's introduction to the biggest HIV/AIDS demographic, homosexuals, Woodruff has a revelation that not only changes his opinion of gays but also is a deep and dark look of sexual discrimination in the south of the U.S in the 1980′s. Dallas Buyers Club is a film dependent on the skills of its actors physical and mental performances. Aside from McConaughey's drastic forty pound weight loss, supporting actor Jared Leto dropped a hefty amount of weight to play the utterly convincing transsexual Rayon. Veering far away from Christian Bale comparisons in his eerie and grotesque turn as Trevor Reznik in Brad Anderson 2004′s indie The Machinist, the two leads in the Dallas Buyers Club abandon physical spectacle in exchange for allowing their on-screen presence to give a candid, historical accuracy of HIV/AIDS patients, and the brutal struggle they faced against a deadly and unforgiving epidemic in the United States in the 1980′s. Dallas Buyers Club is McConaughey's best role yet. Fierce, trashy and edifying, the actor substitutes humility for profanity, glamour for wretchedness, and the light-hearted for the heavy and unapologetic. Finally, McConaughey joins a club of actors that he should be proud to be a part of. Although the year's lead actor category is going to be a full one at this year's Academy Awards, the Supporting Actor category will have a clear winner. Unrecognizable, subtle and submerged into the role, their is no deny or ignoring the raw talent Leto brings to the role of Rayon. His previous efforts as a dedicated method actor, either gaining a large amount of weight or shedding weight with a wink of an eye, Leto's dedication to the craft is showcased in Dallas Buyers Club, and will surely be rewarded. Dallas Buyers Club is a morally, heavy-hitting drama with lasting effects. Dramatizing the social discrimination of gays in the South of the United States and the condition of many low-income, trailer-park living American residents, the film raises the questions whether or not AIDS/HIVS and other fatal diseases are fairly treated within government fine print and whether the main goal of such large and powerful companies is wealth, or health. Gritty, raw and compelling, Dallas Buyers Club is a powerfully dramatic based on a true story. Woodruff was a simple man, whose unfortunate condition brought forth an incredible man who's zest for life inspires others. Ron Woodruff definitely rode the bull in life; challenging the powerful FDA, pharmaceutical companies and notions that were instilled in his since birth. Thankfully for us, Vallee, McConaughey and Leto ride the film into a place in our hearts, in an overly sexualized, passionate display of what it's like to die "with your boots on"; dirty, gritty and with a fighting chance.