Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a combined 80 pounds for the compelling Dallas Buyers Club. There’s an 80 – 1 chance they don’t both secure Oscar nominations. They could both win.
Although you’ll need to see David France’s excellent 2012 documentary, How To Survive A Plague to get a fuller picture of the scope of the AIDS crisis, Dallas Buyers Club zooms in on an unlikely crusader. Part hilarious scumbag, part tireless responder to medical and governmental foot-dragging, Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) was a straight, womanizing, swaggering Texas cracker who in 1985 discovered he had 30 days to live. When diagnosed, Woodroof swiftly goes from complete denial to a take-charge frame of mind. Not liking his chances in a drug trial where half the patients are given a placebo, he makes a deal with a hospital orderly to buy AZT. An electrician and part-time rodeo aspirant who hardly seems accustomed to book learning, he soon researches his medical options. After hooking up with an expatriate American doctor (Griffin Dunne) in Mexico, he’s bringing back drugs and vitamins that lack FDA approval. Donning a priest’s outfit, he poses as a cancer-stricken man of the cloth when interviewed at the American border. Thus begins several years of struggling with federal authorities. Not permitted to sell the unauthorized medications, he sets up a “buyers club” in adjoining motel rooms. For $400 a month, drugs are free, and it’s completely legal. Lines of the stricken and hopeful soon extend outside the door to the club.
Business booms only after Woodroof takes on a transgender accomplice, Rayon (a stunning performance by Leto), who’s savvy at recruiting the local HIV-infected. The odd-couple fellowship between Woodroof and Rayon is a marvel to behold. Leto injects Rayon with a knowing, heroic wit but never loses sight of keeping Ron’s excesses in check. Woodroof loses little of his rooster-like machismo as he begins a transformation, taking on a social consciousness and concern for the marginalized that seems almost accidental in nature. His turn toward compassion may arise out of a rigid sense of self-preservation, but when push comes to shove he’s a changed man in spite of himself.
McConaughey, on a roll of now a half dozen progressively daring roles that even before this one have ascended him to the tiptop of film actors, is simply amazing here. In total command of his character, he portrays the nuances of a steely, take-no-shit cowboy turned pariah. From homophobe to antihero, he is not without vulnerabilities or mood swings bordering on the sorrowful. Yet he never seems to feel sorry for himself.
Despite some oversimplifications, pacing shortcuts and the presence of a bland Jennifer Garner, the film is an eye-opening introduction to a sad time in our history. I won’t criticize the film for not addressing the larger picture of a crisis that was only turned around after a vociferous grass- roots response from those affected by the cold shoulder of governmental bureaucracy. I’ll just make one more plea that you view How To Survive A Plague. Meanwhile, enjoy the microcosm of one man’s battle to survive, and in the process, make himself not only an unlikely caregiver, but a lot more human.