Dallas Buyers Club is not one of my favorite movies of the year. It is a good movie, certainly, but not quite up to par with the best I've seen. Like many biographical films, it tries to apply a formula to a true story, and the result is mixed at best. However, what isn't in dispute is the acting, as both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto give excellent performances.
It isn't just because they went through great pains to be as thin and haggard as people in their situation (Aids sufferers in the mid 80s) would be. Just because they lose a lot (or gain) a lot of weight does not guarantee a memorable performance or a quality film. Leto already has experience with this, bulking up to play Mark David Chapman in the already forgotten Chapter 27. Commitment to "suffering" for their craft is but one part of acting, and isn't always a requirement*. If that performance isn't also worth watching, or the film around is god-awful, all you've really done is put your health at risk for damn near nothing.
The best thing about Leto's performance as Rayon, the business partner of McConaughey's Ron Woodroof in the titular Dallas Buyers Club, is that the characters is played (or written) as some transgendered saint. Far too often these types of movies like to make the marginalized characters that support (never lead) the good fight above reproach. Rayon, however, is purely human. She fights back against her drug addiction, which is always dangerous, but down right suicidal for an AIDS patient, but ultimately fails.
Likewise, McConaughey is (mostly) not a "white savior", a white male who leads a successful crusade to help the suffering marginalized population. Sure, he moves a long way from his homophobic shit-kicking, rodeo loving electrician ways by the end of the film, but he's not exactly Harvey Milk. At first he begins distributing the drugs to AIDS patients as a way to make money, but eventually he takes it on more as a cause, going so far as to keep it going even when the money stops flowing. He may have warmed up to the afflicted, but he isn't necessarily successful, losing his fight to distribute the unapproved drugs in court, although still retaining the ability to self-medicate.
I am too young to remember the fear, paranoia, and bigotry related to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. By the time I became conscious of the disease, Ryan White and Magic Johnson were the faces of the disease, and the homophobic "gay cancer" was fading slowly into the dark recesses of history. To a certain extent the movie conveys the vast amount of disinformation and complexity that surrounded the crisis. Unfortunately is doesn't go as far as contextualizing that as it does in establishing its two main characters. Also, a post movie title card kind of undercuts how the story is told. Had the movie taken a bit more nuanced approach about the complexity and necessarily dispassionate work of scientific medicine and regulations, perhaps it would have been a much better movie.
That being said, it is well worth checking out at some point, if only just for McConaughey and Leto's performance. I recommend this film, so go see it in theaters if you see 1-2 movies a week, and definitely check it out once its out for home video. There is a pretty good chance both of these actors will be winning awards for their performances.
Verdict: Recommend
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