Image via Focus Features.

Last year’s excellent documentary, How To Survive A Plague, chronicled the pivotal and turbulent years of the AIDS epidemic. But what made that film so great and unique to covering the AIDS era, was how it gracefully shifted focus from the battle waged between patients and the virus that infected them to the battle between patients and the FDA and pharmaceutical companies, who severely dropped the ball in making new drugs that would help treat AIDS/HIV patients. That beautifully, and journalistically, chronicled the grassroots efforts by those suffering from AIDS/HIV to pressure the FDA into fast-tracking the right medications for treatment into approval.

Dallas Buyers Club—Jean-Marc Vallée starkly realistic and factual-based account of Ron Woodruff, a Texas electrician who became an unexpected AIDS/HIV activist—feels much like the narrative companion film to David France’s documentary. Rather than gloss it up as an emotionally manipulative prestige pic, Vallée presents Dallas Buyers Club with an almost brutal sense of realism, so much so that the emotional moments unload far more viscerally than if it they were packaged with a sappy orchestral score and soft lighting.

Of course, it helps that Vallée is working with immensely talented actors at the top of their game. And at the tip-top of that talent is Matthew McConaughey—delivering perhaps his best performance to date after a recent string of films that boast praise from critics for being “perhaps his best performance to date.” Indeed, the past few years have seen something of a renaissance for McConaughey who—after many turbulent years making bad decision after bad decision, career-wise—seemed to be nothing more than washboard abs, charming smile, and a Southern accent in Generic Romantic Comedy. With roles in films such as The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, and Mud, McConaughey has firmly reestablished himself as one of today’s finest actors, and now, with Dallas Buyers Club, he’s delivered what will probably be an Academy Award-nominated performance.

McConaughey plays Woodruff, a reckless, crude, womanizing rodeo bum in Dallas in 1986. The film opens with Woodruff fooling around with two women in a shadowy stall at the rodeo as cowboys are hurled off raging bulls in the background. This is Woodruff’s world: Booze-and-drug-addled, misogynistic, homophobic, and seedy. Right off the bat, we know that Woodruff is HIV-stricken before he even does. McConaughey reportedly dropped 40 pounds to portray Woodruff, and he’s as committed to the physical transformation into the role as the emotional one. After collapsing from what he thinks is the flu, Woodruff wakes up in the hospital to the dispiriting news that he’s HIV positive and has 30 days left to live. Initially, he rejects the diagnosis, thinking the attending physicians (played by Denis O’Hare and Jennifer Garner) are conniving crackpots. Soon, however, he realizes the gravity of his situation, bones up on all of the recent medical studies, and tries to obtain treatment from the experimental new drug, AZT.

After AZT nearly kills him, Woodruff wises up and heads to Mexico, where he learns of new, less toxic drugs available that haven’t yet been FDA-approved. After striking up an unusual but genuine friendship with a fellow AIDS patient, the cross-dressing diva Rayon (an absolutely scene-stealing performance from Jared Leto), Woodruff starts illegally importing these experiment drugs and forms the Dallas Buyers Club—a pay-by-the-month homegrown operation for AIDS/HIV patients in the area to get these experimental drugs that are far more effective than the toxic AZT.

From there, Dallas Buyers Club employs a familiar Little Guy vs. The Man narrative, which finds the FDA constantly trying to find ways to shut down Woodruff’s operation. The narrative slogs in the middle a bit—particularly as it gets into a somewhat cyclical pattern of the Dallas Buyers Club getting raided, only to have Woodruff fly to a different country to import more drugs — but its commitment to the true story of Woodruff (who was profiled by The Dallas Morning News in 1992), and the realistic style of telling that story makes it admirable.

Of course, Dallas Buyers Club wouldn’t be half the film it is without the help of, not only McConaughey’s performance, but also Leto’s (another Oscar-worthy performance) and Garner’s. It’s a heart-wrenching film, but not in the usual way that most Oscar-fodder films are, which makes it all the more impressive.

—

Dallas Buyers Club

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Screenplay by Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack
With Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, Steve Zahn, Denis O’Hare
Rated R for for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, nudity and drug use.
Opens today at a theater near you.