The tentative but conventionally rousing
Dallas Buyers Club tells the extraordinary true story of Ron Woodroof, a Texan good ol' boy who in the late 80s was given a death sentence when he became infected with the AIDS virus. On the outset an unsavory, seemingly nasty character prone to homophobic, misogynistic and self-destructive outbursts all in the name of retaining his chauvinistic alpha male supremacy, Woodroof became an unlikely foot soldier in providing vital drugs and vitamins, as well as awareness at a time when the American consciousness was too busy piddling their thumbs as thousands of people died. It's an important and significant story and chronicle of a not-so-distant past horror story, tackling a subject that Hollywood has for the most part been afraid and sketchy at best in telling despite all the red hearts that have so famously been adorned on some of the brightest and most beautiful movie stars in the last quarter century.
In many ways, because of this and despite this,
Dallas Buyers Club is a difficult movie to merely be judged on its own merits and tells a story too significant in recent American history to be ignored or deemed anything less than admirable even if the hopes, expectations and vitality of such a tale are far more deserving of something that soars rather than just exists. Even more considering its been twenty years since Jonathan Demme's
Philadelphia became one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to eve talk about AIDS. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (
C.R.A.Z.Y.) and written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack,
Dallas Buyers Club is a reverent by-the-numbers account of how Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey), a hick-ish electrician became one of the unwilling champions of a cause that was all but ignored by the medical and political machines of Reagan-era America. Once contracted with the virus and given the thirty days left to live speech by doctors, Woodroof explored his options-- first by overdosing on AZT, the hazardous product being hyped up that was in the early process of being tested, then by exporting unapproved medications being sold south of the border and around the world. Ingredients starts to click and slightly improve his condition and eventually he forms a membership club to his AIDS-afflicted neighbors. By design, the film charts itself with the sort of muckraking elan of
Erin Brockovich.
