2013: The Year in Film: "The Dallas Buyer's Club" Review

HIV/AIDs remains a huge health crisis internationally, and a big one here in the United States as well, but by and large, it's become a manageable condition, if monitored and treated properly. It's easy to forget that when the disease was first identified in the early and mid 1980's, it was mysterious, misunderstood, un-treatable, and usually fatal in an extremely short period.  In many circles, it was seen as a disease limited to the gay community, which fed into and inflamed fears, misconceptions and pre-existing biases already surrounding that community.  Study of the disease was extremely limited, treatment was even less so, and the hopes for survival for someone infected with HIV were low to say the least. Add to this equation the inflexible bureaucracy that is the FDA, and there wasn't much hope for someone infected with HIV in the 1980's. In response to the slow progress of the medical community in treating this disease, HIV positive individuals sought other avenues for treatment of their disease, seeking out experimental drugs and treatments that were being tested worldwide. As a way to escape the watchful eye of FDA regulators and law enforcement, these people formed "buyers clubs" as a way to distribute their drugs, where each person paid a membership fee and was given drugs as part of their membership, rather than paying directly for the drugs themselves.

Ron Woodruff was a Texas cowboy, party animal and electrician who, after years of drug use and having sex with anyone who was willing, found himself diagnosed with HIV. He was given only a short time to live, and in his desperation at a lack of options, he began seeking out alternative treatments via medical journals and foreign doctors. After realizing that there was a market for these drugs, he started a "buyer's club" to distribute the drugs among other desperate HIV positive individuals.

The Good: This is a fascinating story that I truly knew nothing about, and the film does a solid job of telling the tale without appearing overly preachy. (as many "message" films are want to do) The portrayal of the mid-80's is solid, but the true draw here are the performances, especially McConaughey in the lead and Jared Leto as transgender woman Rayon. McConaughey is on a real role lately, and his performance in this one is probably the best one of his career. He transformed himself physically, losing a ton of weight to portray the AIDs-afflicted Ron Woodruff, and even if his transformation from masculine homophobe to HIV medicine crusader is a bit cliche, it's still a richly drawn role given real depth and pathos by an actor at the top of his game. Jared Leto also throws himself into the character of Rayon, and his character is at turns funny, charming and utterly convincing. This particular version of the Odd Couple really highlights the human face of the epidemic.



The Bad: Jen Garner's character is pretty damn pointless. She's a doctor who works at the hospital where Woodruff is first diagnosed and she ends up sympathetic to the club and hangs out with the characters... but she doesn't do anything else. Did the film think we needed a quasi romantic lead? I'm still not certain exactly what she's doing. Additionally, in its focus on Woodruff, the rest of the characters lag behind. It would have been interesting to see more of Rayon's motivations, for instance, and maybe get to know the Dallas HIV+ community a little better as well. Woodruff's transition from macho man and homophobe to man of the people seems a BIT too abrupt to be true, but McConaughey's performance helps gloss over these shortcomings.

In all, a pretty damn strong and fascinating film. I don't know that I recall an actor being as red-hot as McConaughey is right now. Between this, Mud, Wolf of Wall Street and True Detective, he's come a long way from romantic lead in awful rom-coms. This one is definitely worth a watch, even if it falls short of the best films of the year.

8/10