REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

Courtesy of Focus Features

Because January is generally a wasteland for new releases (aside from Lone Survivor, which I’m still working up the nerve to see), I typically spend the month catching up on Oscar nominated films I missed over the holidays. That tends to happen when studios release approximately five gazillion movies at the same time.

Luckily, Carrollton Stadium Cinemas helped me out last weekend by finally showing Dallas Buyers Club. The fact-based drama, which takes place at the height of America’s AIDS crisis, had been on my must-see list for a couple of months, but it disappeared from the usual multiplexes before I had a chance to see it. I’d heard nothing but praise for Matthew McConaughey’s performance as the film’s complex protagonist, yet another accomplishment to add to the actor’s incredible prolonged comeback.

And now it’s my turn to heap further accolades on the current frontrunner for Best Actor. His role in Dallas Buyers Club results in some of the boldest, most challenging work he’s ever done. That doesn’t necessarily make it the best film he’s ever made – it’s pretty standard biopic fare – but his performance, along with funny, heartbreaking work from co-star (and almost certain Best Supporting Actor winner) Jared Leto, elevates the material above the connect-the-dots screenplay by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack.

Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) is a native Texan who makes his living as electrician and rodeo cowboy. He spends his free time engaging in pretty much every vice imaginable, which leads to a diagnosis that floors the virulent bigot and homophobe: doctors tell him he’s HIV-positive. Because this is 1985, it’s practically a death sentence for Woodroof – the doctor says he might have 30 days.

He’s in total denial at first, since the illness is still considered “the gay disease” by many people in the mid-’80s. However, after a few cram sessions at the library, he quickly moves from disbelief to problem-solving mode. He learns that other countries have far more treatments and medications, so he begins smuggling unapproved drugs into the U.S. and questioning the medical community’s lack of urgency. He gains two unlikely allies: Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), one of his physicians, and Rayon (Leto), a transsexual and AIDS patient who shares Woodroof’s love of vices as well as his business savvy.

With a little help from his friends, he establishes a loophole for others seeking similar help without the fear of government sanctions. He establishes a “buyers club,” in which HIV-positive people pay monthly dues for access to “free” medication that Woodroof smuggles into the country. It begins as a purely entrepreneurial venture, but the guy who once hated and feared gay people now empathizes with them. They have a common enemy.

McConaughey is fearless in the title role, not afraid to depict the ugliness of Woodroof’s personality before he learns to identify with those he used to despise. Yet he never turns the guy into a saint, even when he refuses to see friends like Rayon disrespected. The actor undergoes a staggering physical transformation as well. He wasn’t exactly a portly fellow to begin with, but he lost 45 pounds to better illustrate the damage HIV and AIDS does to the body. In the opening scenes, his emaciated frame is almost unrecognizable and it remains haunting even after the character finds a drug regimen that works for him.

Leto is also a commanding presence, though he’s not in the movie as much as I expected. He gets his share of the story’s tension-relieving punchlines, but never at the expense of his character. Rayon isn’t a stereotypical sassy drag queen. She’s a compelling, tragic figure (the scene where she asks her estranged father for a favor is devastating), but one who refuses to wallow in misery.

Garner is her endearing self, playing a doctor who suffers career-altering consequences by questioning the status quo. Her chemistry with McConaughey is still dazzling, though it also serves as an inadvertent reminder of the “romantic comedy overload” portion of the actor’s career. (Fun fact: the leads of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past are now co-stars in a Best Picture nominee. And one of them has a better-than-decent shot at winning an acting Oscar.)

I did have some concerns with the film’s depiction of most doctors and the FDA as outright villains (and some quick research on the details of the real-life case complicates matters even further, particularly where Woodroof is concerned), but I get that the screenwriters have to simplify things to fit a two-hour biopic. Overall, director Jean-Marc Vallee acquits himself nicely, finally bringing an important story to the big screen after it spent 20 years languishing in development.

If you’re interested in seeing Dallas Buyers Club, it’s about to become much easier to get your hands on. The film hits DVD, Blu-ray, pay-per-view, etc. on Tuesday. It’s definitely worth a watch – good movie, but great performances.

Dallas Buyers Club is rated R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, nudity and drug use.

Grade: B+