There’s a lot going on in “Dallas Buyers Club,” including bull-riding, drug use, disease, flamboyance, a historical look at the AIDS crisis and a “Texas white trash hick” (as he’s called) bucking the health system.
But at the center is someone embarking on a new kind of life, just as he’s been given a death sentence.
Adding to the punch: he’s played, in an extraordinary turn, by Matthew McConaughey, who himself is in the midst of a career reinvention. This moving, funny, scary, true-life story surrounds him with a brash kind of ballsiness.
McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, an electrician and rodeo rider in 1985 Dallas. The wild-card Woodroof, first seen romping with girls in the corner of an auditorium, has a construction site accident and is told by doctors his blood tests positive for HIV. Given 30 days to live, Woodroof rebels with hookers and blow. In the hospital again, he meets Rayon (Jared Leto), a transgendered AIDS sufferer who gets past Woodroof’s disgust after a game of poker.
Rayon is taking part in a clinical trial for AZT. When Woodroof, whose previous knowledge of his own disease was limited to Rock Hudson jokes, can’t get in on the trial (“Screw the FDA, I’m DOA!” he yells to a sympathetic doctor played by Jennifer Garner), he buys AZT from a hospital worker and hears of Mexico’s black market. With research, Woodroof finds drugs unapproved by the FDA.
A renegade doc (Griffin Dunne) south of the border gets Ron off the dangerous AZT and on a program of unapproved — but not illegal — proteins, vitamins and medicine. Back in Dallas, Woodroof needs Rayon to start selling the shipments to men in need. The two become business partners, starting a so-called “buyers club”: $400 memberships equals unlimited drugs. The dividend isn’t only tons of cash, but a ton of humanity that the crass rodeo cowboy Woodroof wasn’t counting on.
Director Jean-Marc Vallee lets the rhythms of Woodroof’s condition dictate the action. When he gets a 30-day deathwatch, the film marks the days — thanks to the vitamins, they hit 2,557 — and the soundtrack echoes with the ringing sound in Woodroof’s head.
The commitment McConaughey brings is something to behold. Emaciated from the moment we see him, he’s unrecognizable from his other recent tours de force in “Magic Mike” and “Mud.” Woodroof’s mix of Texas blowhard and eccentric bozo is clearly his strong suit.
If Woodroof is the movie’s guts, Rayon is its heart, and Leto (TV’s “My So-Called Life,” “Alexander”) is stunningly perfect, even when the story veers ever so slightly into expected territory. A scene in which Rayon wears a suit to ask his disapproving father for money to help Woodroof is achingly poignant. Leto and McConaughey make it impossible not cheer these lost-and-found souls’ tough, tender fight.
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