A very good deal

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2014)

Dallas Buyers Club is unashamedly accessible and formula-driven, while bringing to the fore various social concerns: ideal, conscientious, mainstream filmmaking, then. On the surface it looks like a kind of Philadelphia for the 21st century. But Jean-Marc (The Young Victoria) Vallee's film isn't simply a film about discrimination; it's also about the relationship between the public and Big Pharma, the ethics of controlled drugs trials, and the cooperative human spirit.
Based on a true story, the story begins in 1985. A self-destructive rodeo named Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) discovers he has HIV. Regarding it as a disease for "fags", he dismisses (and defies) the medical establishment's 30-day prognosis. He researches drugs - and alternative drugs. Woodroof becomes a dealer in non-FDA-approved medicines, "smuggling" vitamins and proteins from around the world. He then sells memberships on US soil, giving the pills away for free. Needless to say, a showdown with the FDA looms. Along the way, Woodroof befriends a transgender woman, Rayon (Jared Leto), and a sympathetic doctor, Eve (Jennifer Garner).
The "McConaughnaissance" will be complete with Christopher Nolan's Interstellar later this year, but this is the movie that could (and should) nab McConaughey an Oscar. It's not the best or boldest movie in his astonishing run since 2011's The Lincoln Lawyer, but his is a fierce, detailed, unsentimental performance worthy of recognition. Leto is very moving in the supporting role. Garner, sadly, has less to get her teeth into, largely reduced to a sympathetic sideliner.
Despite its subject matter, the film is not unrelentingly grim, and there are frequent bursts of humour, particularly in the increasingly tender odd couple banter between Ron and Rayon. It's a story with a natural drama at its core: two extremes (the alpha-hetero and the flamboyantly camp) uniting against the weight of an aggressive, punitive institution; a story that can't fail to inspire, provoke, and outrage in equal measure.