Dallas Buyers Club

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790636/

Dallas Buyers Club is not a great movie. It’s a picture of what happens when some good actors get a script they can really sink their teeth into. The acting is the main thing on display here and nearly every part is perfectly played.

Leading the way is Matthew McConaughey perfectly cast as an anti-hero for whom you don’t have much sympathy. He’s a womanizing drunkard with the extra baggage of egotism, bigotry and chauvinism. One might be tempted to experience Karmic glee when he receives his diagnosis of HIV. Then his character’s soul undergoes a metamorphosis that is subtle and realistic, meaning it never wallows in the sentimental.

McConaughey’s character, Ron Woodroof, was a real person. Receiving his diagnosis in the 80’s at a time when the victims of HIV were received with fear and loathing, Woodroof becomes frustrated with a medicine’s inability to treat his condition and looks for alternatives. This search puts him at odds with a system ideally designed to protect the public but ostensibly serving the financial interests of Big Pharma, the folks making huge profits on drugs of questionable safety and utility.

Rayon (Jared Leto) and Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) forge a business alliance and eventually a friendship in Dallas Buyers Club

These are desperate times and Woodroof meets a number of desperate people, the most dazzling (and fabulous) of whom is Rayon. She’s a flashy, in-your-face transgendered person portrayed by Jared Leto. Although the pair gets off to a shaky start, before they know it they’ve become partners in an enterprise that mainly provides hope for those without hope.

Both actors underwent their own metamorphosis to prepare for the roles. They both shed startling amounts of body mass to look the part of wasting patients. I’m sure such changes can’t be healthy so it’s difficult to applaud them for their sacrifice, but the results are dramatic.

Once Ron Woodroof establishes his network of purchasers of non-traditional treatments, many of which require trips across the border, he runs afoul of the FDA, DEA, AMA and assorted other authorities, otherwise known as The Man. The Man comes down hard on Woodroof and the film becomes a predictable series of legal thrusts and parries and, well, you know how that always turns out.

While many of these clubs existed then and may still be around now. The people involved in these clubs, I’m certain, had more wistful and heroic reasons for challenging the system and helping people in great need. However, Woodroof’s story is the one producers selected to set the times in the amber of our motion picture consciousness. They don’t pull any of their punches. The characters are raw and not too sympathetic. 

Their extracurricular activities are not honorable and many people will be disgusted by some of the situations. If you aren’t bothered by that, then you’ll enjoy some groundbreaking performances by actors in their best roles to date and that’s saying something for someone like McConaughey who seems to have two or three pictures out each year.

Dallas Buyer’s Club is a good history lesson and allows us to experience one of the darker times of recent history and for that, it gets three Wilders out of four.

  

 This week’s Overlooked Film of Significance: David Fincher’s masterpiece Fight Club could hardly be considered obscure, but next time you watch please note the minor role played by Jared Leto. Bleached blond with a never-say-die attitude, Leto’s character is almost euphoric as his pretty boy looks are pummeled into a freakish mush.