Dallas Buyers Club

Cast of Characters:
Ron Woodroof - Matthew McConaughey
Dr. Eve Saks - Jennifer Garner
Rayon - Jared Leto

Director - Jean-Marc Vallee
Screenplay - Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack
Rated R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, nudity and drug use


      The McConaughsance continues and its Oscar buzz is heating up. Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto costar with Matthew McConaughey in the true life story of Ron Woodroof, Dallas Buyers Club.

 

      Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is a drug addicted, rodeo cowboy sleaze who, after his rather loose ways, is diagnosed HIV positive and is told he has only 30 days left to live. While he does take the FDA approved AZT drug, this only helps bring him closer to the brink of death. To survive, Woodroof begins to smuggle FDA unapproved anti-viral medications.

      Soon after, other AIDS patients begin to seek out his medications. With the help of his doctor, Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) and fellow patient Rayon (Jared Leto), Ron creates the Dallas Buyers Club. As expected, the club keeps growing in numbers, which alert the FDA and other pharmaceutical companies who are determined to put an end to Woodroof's operation.

      It's always a challenge for any screenwriter - hell, any writer - to present us an unlikeable character that, as the movie progresses, we find ourselves caring for and by the end of the movie has won our hearts over. Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack have written an excellent screenplay that's so good, it's easy to look over a few of the cliche secondary characters that pop up every now and then. I mean, the movie's not about them anyway. Together with director Jean-Marc Vallee, the three plunge the viewers back to a time when AIDS was scaring the shit out of everyone. All the little stylistic touches Vallee provides us with paints a nightmarish picture for Ron Woodroof as he finds himself in the most desperate of desperate situations and dives head first into desperate measures to handle them. Ron makes it easy to not like him. He's a coke snorting, booze drinking, sex crazed, womanizing ass and that we find ourselves slowly but surely sympathizing not just with his situation, but with the man himself shows just how powerful the writing and directing here is. Performing alongside McConaughey are two stellar supporting performances from Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto (who like McConaughey, also lost a considerable amount of weight for his role). Leto's film career hasn't always been consistent, but he has delivered gem performances before in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and also in the very underrated Chapter 27 (another film where he drastically altered his appearance by gaining weight to play Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer). Here he gives a performance that's bound to garner him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Jennifer Garner has never been my cup of tea for actresses, but is absolutely wonderful here as the doctor with a conscience. Yes, of course, the obligatory doctor with a conscience, but by God, she sure sells it. Overall though, all of that is secondary to one man - Matthew McConaughey. This is his movie and it rests solely on a career best performance from him that not only has a shot at earning a Best Actor nomination, but also could very well win (Chiwetel Ejiofor might have something to say about that, though). Having reportedly shed fifty pounds to play the real life Ron Woodroof, McConaughey disappears into the role. This is not the charming, smirking, "Ooh, another opportunity for me to whip my shirt off" McConaughey we knew of ten years ago. This is a sad, emotional, desperate performance of a man that at the beginning brags, "Nothing can kill off Ron Woodroof!", but when we look past the facade, we see a man told he only has 30 days left to live, then ostracized by his friends, with no one else to turn to other than his doctor and a fellow AIDS patient. It's a complex performance that never once panders for our pity, but we find ourselves feeling for him as the story progresses.

      Following Mud earlier this year and with Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street just around the corner, 2013 is the year of McConaughey. Ten - well not even ten years back, just five years back, if you asked me if I'd be taking McConaughey seriously as an actor I would've told you at the beginning of his career, yes, but now, not so much. I've been proven wrong. I've always known McConaughey had the talent to be a great actor and we saw that early on in films such as Amistad and Contact. After years and years of seeing him waste it in chick flick hell, we finally get a superb performance from him that reminds us of what he has always been capable of. If Mud somehow didn't do it for you, this film certainly will. I give Dallas Buyers Club an A (★★★★).