
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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