"If it sucks, I got it."

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2014)

As I'm watching some of the early scenes where Rayon (Jared Leto) and Eve (Jennifer Garner) are on screen together, I'm thinking to myself, how is it possible that Leto is prettier than Garner? I just couldn't wrap my head around that idea. Just like you might not be able to wrap your own head around the idea that Leto and Matt McConaughey both lost some big time poundage to get into their roles here. If I didn't know McConaughey was the Ron Woodroof character before the picture started, I wouldn't have had a clue who the guy was. Simply amazing.
So I have to plead ignorance to the history depicted in the film. I know film makers take huge liberty when making a picture, so I don't know how much of this is true or poetic license. Certainly Woodroof's wheeling and dealing all over the world stretches credibility given his white trash, trailer park origins, so I'll simply have to take that as a given. Actually, I was dumbfounded as soon as he started using a computer.
With all the politics and money involved in bringing new medical advances to reality, the story itself is believable enough. We've seen it before where bad decisions are made just because the monetary stakes were so huge, and from that standpoint the picture is both noteworthy and frustrating at the same time. But beyond that, it's the performances you have to see here even if the entire story were fictional. You'll be transfixed by the characters of Woodroof and Rayon as they navigate their way through the picture while virtually morphing their appearance from one scene to the next.