Modern day plague anti-hero.

Rating: 8/10 (4 January 2014)

During the early dark days of the Aids epidemic in America the powers that be took scant notice or chose to ignore the phenomena that was wiping out a certain segment of the population ( needle sharing druggies, gay men) at an appalling rate. Given the social standing of both groups in the eighties the government refused to sound the alarm bell, allowing instead for the FDA to take its time approving other drugs beyond the hard on the system AZT. Working at that time as a state health investigator in that field I encountered dozens of HIV positive individuals who claimed it made them sicker than they were and some stopped taking the med. South of the border in Mexico there were drugs proving to be more efficacious without FDA approval. Enter Ron Woodruff rodeo electrician,con man and hedonist who decided to do something about it when faced with the deadly diagnosis.
In The Dallas Buyers Club Matt McConaughey creates a vivid warts and all portrait of the man who refused to take no for an answer and it is by far the best performance of his career. Painfully thin and skeletal looking McConnaghy's sickly visage belies a healthy determination to fight the system's apathy in an offbeat David and Goliath struggle. By employing his con man skills to circumvent the law and distribute the unapproved meds to the infected he starts the Dallas Buyers Club out of a dubious motel by selling memberships. The DEA however does not take it lying down and it results in raids and court battles.
McConaughey dominates the picture as the surly pugnacious Don Quixote tilting at the government with a solid assist from Jared Leto playing his infected, drug addled transsexual Sancho Panza. As a physician and Woodruff's only ally working within the system Jennifer Garner comes across flat and dispassionate whiffing on more than one scene with McConaughey and disapproving colleagues.
Things lag slightly towards the end but director Jean Marc Valee states his case plainly and solidly without hysteria on this one time hot topic that has cooled considerably over the years as the disease is no longer an automatic death sentence due to advancement in meds and education. You may quibble about the size of Ron Woodruff's contribution and his unorthodox methodology but there is no denying his effort to help a desperate population in the darkest days of the disease as anything else other than courageous.