A searing look at a sliver of important history, and two superb acting jobs

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2014)

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
What starts as an interpersonal drama with Matthew McConaughey leading the way, ends up as a more hard-hitting social message film with historical roots. It's about survival, accountability, American entrepreneurship, and AIDS. And McConaughey as Ron Woodroof is quite perfect, an amazing role played with a perfect mixture of restraint and excess as required.
It's necessary to mention as a secondary play Jared Leto, who plays a transgender woman, Rayon, also with AIDS. Woodroof overcomes his apparent homophobia to embrace Rayon as a partner and friend. Playing this kind of "type" might seem easy—like playing a racist sheriff or a grumpy old man—but Leto makes it complex and fair to that kind of person. (By the way, Rayon is fictional and Woodroof is not. The main story is true, including the making of a buyers club based on a model in New York that skirted laws for awhile.)
This is a movie ripe for praise and criticism both. It digs into an important subject and turbulent time. It also creates simplified versions of the people and their circumstances. Cries of inaccuracy (especially against the hospital, which is portrayed as pawn in the pharma corporate world) are fair but don't let them distract you. This is a drama, a dramatization, and it's well done to the heels. Beautifully rendered and truly filled with drama.
If the two actors deserve the most credit (and by extension the leading woman, a doctor played by Jennifer Garner, does not), the director needs to singled out here for capturing the feel of the times and the place (Dallas, filmed in New Orleans) so well. It's never distracting with affectation even as it is always interesting and colorful. And the story is told well and fast and without unnecessary sentiment.