Dallas Buyer’s Club was a movie I thought I would like, wanted to like, and started off liking until it became a biopic that just started to bore me. This movie will get lots of recognition during awards season and, in many cases, deservingly so. The performances of Matthew McConaughey (Mud, Killer Joe) and especially Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream, Girl Interrupted) are top-notch. I could see McConaughey getting a nod for best actor for portraying the real-life HIV-positive Ron Woodroof, even though I thought his performance in Mud was better (note, he might get a best-supporting actor nomination for that movie). Leto is a lock for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. His performance as Rayon, a transsexual HIV-positive drug addict, named Rayon, is out of this world. The chemistry between the two main actors was top-notch. While Jennifer Garner (13 Going on 30, Juno) underwhelms as a local doctor whose specialty is working with patients infected with HIV or AIDS, Steve Zahn (Joy Ride, Rescue Dawn) is nearly unrecognizable (in a good way) as Ron’s brother and a local police officer. Jean-Marc Vallee did a pretty good job directing this movie. The cinematography is awesome. The movie takes place in 1985 Texas and feels like 1985 Texas. McConaughey is a cocaine-addicted womanizer who earns money as a small-time electrician, part-time rodeo rider, and small-time drug dealer. His lifestyle is reckless, and his body shows its wear and tear. He looks like he is about 30 pounds underweight the entire movie.
So the movie starts awesomely. We meet Ron Woodroof having unprotected sex at a rodeo with two women. He is as much of a homophobe as you are going to meet. His homosexual jokes are tasteless and make you feel uncomfortable, at times, as a moviegoer. Yet this movie isn’t meant to make you feel good. It is brutally honest in every aspect. While Ron’s homophobic beliefs are…strong, McConaughey never portrays him as a bad guy. In fact, despite his recklessness and beliefs about homosexuality, he’s a rather likable guy. One day, he finds himself in the emergency room after an accident and is told that he is HIV positive and has 30 days to live. He desperately tries to find drugs that will combat the disease, regardless of whether his means of obtaining these drugs are legal. He meets Rayon while in the hospital. The duo strikes a unique friendship, mostly because Rayon can ignore Ron’s constant verbal jabs. Together, they form the Dallas Buyer’s Club, a business that gives non-FDA-approved drugs, vitamins, and proteins to HIV-invested patients. Since most HIV-positive patients are homosexuals, Ron needs Rayon to sell to that community since he first refuses to deal with them.
Since this movie is based on a true story, I will not hammer its “feel good” aspects. Ron’s character change is too good to be true, but if it’s based on a true story, who am I to say it didn’t happen. He went from careless and indifferent towards his disease to the one in the United States who seemed to know more about it than anyone. Part of the transformation is believable. Part of it isn’t. His indifference at first was believable. He truly believed that HIV was a homosexual disease (remember that it was only 1985) and that the doctors were mistaken in their diagnosis. The part that wasn’t as believable was what he could do to combat the disease and start the Dallas Buyer’s Club. I know many of the laws back in 1985 were not as stringent as they are today, but Ron was able to get away with A LOT.
All told, Dallas Buyer’s Club is boring. It clocks in under two hours, but it feels like three. The first 45 minutes are awesome, but it becomes a history lesson. I can’t recommend it to anyone except those interested in seeing the movies in discussion during awards season. This one deserves the two acting nominations it likely will get, but ones for such categories as Best Director and Best Picture, I don’t get. For most moviegoers, wait until DVD or skip it altogether.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 8/10
81.5%
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