McConaughey nails it.

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2014)

4 years ago Matthew McConaughey's embarrassing run of romcoms (Fool's Gold, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner) hit its nadir with the abysmal Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and all looked bleak for the once promising star. Then after a two year sabbatical, the Texan struck back with critically acclaimed turns in Lincoln Lawyer, Killer Joe, Mud, Magic Mike and The Wolf of Wall Street, all within 24 months. The career transformation is elevated even further here with his Oscar nommed and Golden Globe winning performance as redneck cowboy turned AIDS patient Ron Woodroof. Refusing to give in to the sickness and enraged with the limited medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of AIDS, Woodroof starts up the titular club in order to supply non-approved (but not illegal) drugs to those suffering from the disease, causing major ripples within the system in the process. Despite being a true story (from 1985), Dallas Buyers Club comes after a long line of similar stories told on film and subsequently can't shake its clichéd and predictable trimmings: egotistical pig finding his humility, unlikely friendship between polar opposites, big bad corporation stomping on the little people, etc. Yet the shortfalls in the screenplay are more than compensated by the amazing on screen commitment and charisma of the leading trio. As transvestite homosexual Rayon, Jared Leto is sympathetic, engaging and thankfully grounded despite his surface-level flamboyance, whilst Jennifer Garner is in career best form as Eve, a by-the-book but empathetic doctor who genuinely just wants the best for her patients. However this is undeniably the McConaughey show and boy does he nail it.