Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Certified: 18
Duration: 116 minutes
Directed by: Jean Marc Vallée
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O’Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Kevin Rankin
KRS release
Loosely based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club is set in Dallas in the 1980s and stars Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof, an electrician who moonlights as a cowboy in rodeos. Life is a breeze: he is always partying with his friend T.J. (Kevin Rankin), has casual sex with various women, and is at times at loggerheads with Tucker (Steve Zahn), a local policeman.
He believes only homosexuals can get HIV and Aids, but he is also diagnosed with this condition. Dr Sevard and Dr Eve Saks (Denis O’Hare and Jennifer Garner) break the news to him and tell him he has 30 days left to live.
Ron is afraid and, even though he does not believe this is possible, he starts looking for information about his affliction and ways to treat it. The drug AZT seems to be what he needs but it only available for patients who agree to carry out blind testing.
Dr Saks tells him that she cannot get him into the experimental drug programme but Ron manages to bribe a hospital staff member. However, the drug supply is soon shut off.
This leads him to Dr Vass (Griffin Dunne), who practises outside the legal boundaries of his profession. With his treatment, Ron’s condition becomes stable.
Ron here sees a business opportunity: that of bringing into the US non-FDA approved drugs and sell them to the sick. He brings in Rayon (Jared Leto), a transsexual he has met who also needs treatment. All this brings him into trouble with FDA agent Richard Barkley (Michael O’Neill), and he gets help from his lawyer David Wayne (Dallas Roberts).
It has been since Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River that the Academy Award for best actor and best supporting actor did not go to the same film. The Dallas Buyers Club, made for a paltry $5 million, is a showcase of storytelling and method acting for both McConaughey and Leto, making this film an almost modern Midnight Cowboy.
Having seen Dallas Buyers Club before this weekend’s Academy Awards, I would still have written that the two central performances are Oscar worthy. The film succeeds thanks to these actors who deliver their own slant and sense of meaning about life.
The film kicks off at the time when the world was rocked by the news of famous actor Rock Hudson’s death due to Aids in 1985. The disease was immediately tagged as being a homosexual one, and catching it meant a loss of reputation and exclusion from society. Dallas Buyers Club makes us dig deep and analyse our own attitudes and views on the subject.
As the film progresses, we see a gradual transformation of McConaughey’s character. The actor literally grows into his character and gives us a showstopping performance that celebrates diversity and life. Leto balances him out with a beautiful performance that provides extra layers to the film.
All in all, the performances as well as the film’s overall pacing, are what give Dallas Buyers Club its sense of time and place, its depth and also its sense of defiance and ode to the will to live.