A story of true grit and perseverance

Rating: 5/10 (21 March 2020)

Dallas Buyers Club is a story of true grit and perseverance. The very intimate and personal journey of two very different men struggling for human dignity. Prejudice and bigotry are broken down as the two men become friends as they reluctantly work together to find treatment for people diagnosed with HIV.
In 1985, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was just becoming understood and primarily associated with the gay community. When we meet Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), we get a glimpse into his character and personality. He's an extremely homophobic hustler with a wild lifestyle of heavy drinking, cocaine, and sex. One day while at work, he gets called to come to help a migrant worker who got his leg caught in an oil drill and gets electrocuted. While in the hospital, Dr. Sevard (Denis O'Hare) and Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) give him his grim HIV positive diagnosis and only thirty days to live. Ron reacts with anger and denies that he would have a disease that only "faggots" get. He goes on a cocaine and sex binge to drown out his emotions. The thirty-days-to-live diagnosis haunts Ron, so he decides to go to the library to do some research and realizes that the diagnosis is accurate.
After learning that AZT is the most effective drug to treat HIV, he goes back to the hospital to find out how to get some. However, the drug is in clinical trials, and he cannot simply buy the drug. He convinces Dr. Saks to get him in the trial where he meets a drug addict transvestite named Rayon (Jared Leto) who also has the virus. He is disgusted by Rayon but now relates to him on a level he never thought possible. The trial is taking too long for Ron, so he buys AZT from a hospital orderly. When that runs out, he decided to head to Mexico to see a Dr. Vass.
As Ron is driving along thinking. We watch as he realizes the severity of his diagnosis becomes too much to bear. He pulls over on the side of the road. We are introduced to his desperation in this intimate moment. This is the first time we see Ron's real emotional struggle with the disease. This scene is crucial to help build empathy and compassion for because he started out as such a horrible guy. He pulls himself out of his despair and continues on. When Ron gets to Mexico, Dr. Vass gives him a combination of vitamins and other drugs he's found more effective in treating HIV. Ron makes a dramatic recovery and decides to smuggle the drugs back to the U.S. to make a profit.
Back in the US, Ron makes an unlikely partnership with Rayon to get the drugs to the HIV community. Ironically, they team up and become friends in their fight against the FDA, who continually tries to shut them down. Caught in the middle is Dr. Saks. She discovers Ron is treating her patients. She is caught in a moral dilemma. She understands why policies are in place, but sympathizes with Ron and decides to help them. Ron finds a loophole in the system and opens the Dallas Buyers Club. He sells monthly membership dues in exchange for free drugs. Ron helps many people in his last years of life and becomes a decent human being in the end. His prejudice is reversed, and he fights for the people he hated so deeply at first.
The first film to tackle homophobic prejudice was the film "Philadelphia," starring Tom Hanks in 1993. Both films did a fantastic job of showing the physical toll the disease takes on the body. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a significant amount of weight to add to the sickly look that was needed to make them look authentic. Makeup was used to add lesions and sores and to further deteriorate their physical appearance. Throughout the film, a high-pitched sound appears when Ron is very ill, and his state of mind is stressed. Dallas Buyers Club carefully crafts the two lives of two very different people coming together to fight for the same cause, breaking down prejudice and becoming friends along the way.