Director: Jean-Marc Valee
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, and Michael O'Neill
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 117 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2014

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Rating notes: Strong sex scenes, drug use and coarse language

This American film is based on actual events around the life of an AIDS sufferer, Ron Woodroff, who peddled non-approved drugs in Texas, USA, in the 1980s. The film received Golden Globe Awards in 2014 for Best Actor (Matthew McConaughey) and Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto), and has been nominated for six Academy Oscars, including Best Picture.

Woodroff (Matthew McConaughey) was a Texan cowboy, who enjoyed a free-wheeling lifestyle full of drugs and easy access to sex. Portrayed as a heterosexual man with homophobic attitudes, he was diagnosed in 1985 with HIV and given 30 days to live. The 1980s was an era when nobody knew how to combat the AIDS virus, and being labelled HIV-Positive was regarded as a certain death sentence, and a reason for social rejection.

Refusing to accept his medical diagnosis, Woodroff remembers that he had unprotected sex with an intravenous female drug-user. Ostracised by those he considered his friends, who now believe he is a person to be despised, he goes to see Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) at a drug clinic. She explains to him the intricacies of experimental drug trials, where he may or may not be the person given the experimental drug that could help him. The drug he wants from her is AZT.

Unable to get into her trial, he bribes a hospital worker to get him AZT, which begins to affect his health negatively. He travels to a Mexican hospital to get more of the drug, thinking an increase of the medication is what he really needs. In Mexico, he starts to take another drug, DDC and the protein Peptide T, which improve his health dramatically by building up his immune system, which AZT helped to attack.

Ron returns from Mexico and begins to sell DDC on the street in a business he sets up with Rayon (Jared Leto), a fellow-AIDS sufferer who feels he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. Together, they establish the “Dallas Buyers Club” which holds out hope to AIDS sufferers. Club members pay $400 for a month’s membership, and once joined up, they are promised access to a range of non-approved drugs. An official from the FDA, Richard Barkley (Michael O’Neill) steps in to stop the drug-trafficking and threatens to arrest Woodroff. Rayon, unable to access the drugs he needs to prolong his life, dies, and Dr. Saks is forced to confront the unethical, uncaring practices of establishment medicine, the FDA, and business which is profiting by the use of experimental drugs that can have lethal toxic effects. The film ends by informing us that Woodroff, following a legal battle, was later allowed to use DDC, which extended his life for 7 years.

In the film, McConaughey delivers an utterly convincing performance of a doomed man. Losing over 20kg for the role and looking emaciated, he inhabits the character of Ron Woodroff in an amazingly credible way. His acting performance is total immersion in the role, and Jared Leto gives outstanding support to him as Rayon.

Largely due to extraordinary acting and the tight, controlled direction of Jean-Marc Valee, the movie rises well above the tragedy of Woodroff’s personal plight. Initially presented as a racist, alcoholic and homophobic person, Woodroff develops a fierce desire to live, and the relationship that grows between Rayon, the effeminate transexual and Woodroff, the gay-fearing heterosexual, is remarkable for the subtleties it reveals about the personality of both persons and the human condition in general. Despite his homophobic attitudes, Woodroff comes to understand that Jared doesn’t want to die just as he doesn’t, and accepts Jared’s dependence on his own community for emotional support. Contrary to his own attitudes, Woodroff also comes to accept the gratitude of those he is assisting.

Although there is considerable controversy about Woodroff’s actual sexual inclination, the film breaks down prejudice in moving and unsentimental ways. This is not a comfortable movie to watch, but it is very well acted and directed. It pulls no punches about the physical nature of AIDS, and the film deals very effectively with lonely people trapped by the destructiveness of their own behaviour. It never lets you forget that human beings can also be caught tragically in circumstances of other people’s making.

The Oscar for Best Actor is for Matthew McConaughey to lose.