Matthew McConaughey has been winning the Best Actor award in virtually every competition so far this year. While I disagree, you might if you see Dallas Buyers Club.
Dallas Buyers Club — (Matthew McConaughey, Jered Leto, Jennifer Garner, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn) – The emergence of the AIDS epidemic was one of the biggest health news stories of the 20th century. The prevalence of AIDS in Africa and its spread in the U.S. among homosexuals, intravenous drug users, and among people having unprotected sex became a dominant worldwide health hazard.
Dallas Buyers Club gets to the point fast. Ron Woodruff, a rodeo enthusiast, electrician, sex addict, and drug addict, lands in the hospital after a night of excess. It is 1985, and his doctors tell him he has the HIV virus, a low “T” cell count, and has 30 days to live. He is incredulous. He isn’t gay and doesn’t take intravenous drugs (he says). But he has plenty of sex (the movie opens with a sex scene). Bold, brash, and profane, Ron is suddenly faced with reality. So he does some homework and heads back to the hospital to the more sympathetic of the physicians, Eve (Jennifer Garner). She tells him he doesn’t have any options even though clinical trials are now being conducted on the cancer drug, AZT. The doctors have written Ron off.
So Ron does what Ron does. He bribes a janitor at the hospital to steal some AZT for him, and he takes it indiscriminately along with booze, cocaine and anything else in sight. He almost dies. His roommate is a transsexual (Jered Leto in the performance of the year – hello Oscar!). Next stop: Mexico. The enemy of the film isn’t AIDS as much as it is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is painfully behind countries like Denmark and Israel in the advanced treatment of AIDS using AZT and other drugs. In Mexico, he finds a defrocked physician who is treating patients of all kinds, including those with AIDS, with vitamins, minerals, a protein used for dementia patients, and other drugs in what would later become a cocktail. The apparent problem with AZT alone is that it kills cells of all types, particularly in the large doses being used for AIDS patients. Ron poses as a priest and smuggles these drugs into the U.S., all under the eye of the FDA. The government isn’t going to approve AIDS except under its strict clinical trial criteria, which the movie paints as archaic.
Oddly (at least to me), the FDA lets him bring the drugs in, even though he tells them the drugs are just for him. Not only does he take the drugs himself, he sees a financial opportunity here. So he sets up shop in a sleazy motel and ostensibly lets the gay community know that he has drugs for them. They line up day after day. But instead of just selling the drugs, he starts a clinic. For $400 a month, the “members” of the Dallas Buyer’s Club can get all the drugs they need.
Slowly (this doesn’t make any sense), the FDA circles him. And just as slowly, Ron evolves from AIDS entrepreneur to AIDS advocate. Even while he is on intravenous fluids, he is a wheeler and dealer, taking on the government and traveling around the world to score drugs. Meanwhile, people are dying around him but Ron’s 30-day death sentence is elongating.
The film turns into an odyssey of treating the infected patients, of fighting the FDA, and of feeding the addicts’ appetites. It is a painful, desperate journey.
Matthew McConaughey is excellent as Woodruff. The skinny actor lost so much weight for the film that he looks God-awful. For that, he seems to be winning all of the awards for Best Actor. His performance shows more depth than he has demonstrated since his impressive debut in A Time To Kill. But it is not the best performance of the year. I admit it, I don’t think he is much of an actor. And while he shows more range than ever, this reminds me of the year Sandra Bullock won for The Blind Side. It was the best performance of her career but inferior to the other nominees. Good for him if he wins it but he would not have my vote.
To boot, Jennifer Garner is her usual mediocre self. Likeable, yes. Great actress, no. But Jered Leto’s performance as Rayon (emphasis on the last syllable) is otherworldly. See the movie just for him. A character actor in every way, Leto hits a home run and carries the film. His plight is heartbreaking and painful. He is estranged from his father, lusts to be a woman, and suffers every indignity but remains positive throughout. Now that is acting.
In parts, Dallas Buyers Club (why is there no apostrophe in the title?) drags; other times, it is gripping. Always sexy, it never seems real. The attempted courtship of Eve by Ron looks terribly contrived.
I didn’t hate this movie as much as it sounds. I think it is a low-budget, well done independent film that is way over-achieving compared to its production value. If you miss it, you might also miss two Academy Award-winning performances. That alone is the reason to catch it before the ceremonies. But, like me, you might walk out feeling like it wasn’t Best Picture worthy. If there had been only five nominated pictures (oh, how I long for that), Dallas Buyers Club wouldn’t have made the cut.
