‘Dallas Buyers Club’ may be mainly driven by Matthew McConaughey’s amazing performance as Ron Woodroof, but the film as a whole stands as a great example of an extremely well done biopic. I had never heard the story before the film, but unlike ‘Captain Phillips’, I was surprised to hear that most of Woodruffs exploits were actually true.

Set in 1985, Ron Woodroof is an homophobic rodeo cowboy diagnosed with HIV. As a result he loses his friends and job and begins taking anti-AIDS drug ‘AZT’. The drug almost poisons him, leading to his smuggling of unapproved FDA anti-virals and the start of the Dallas Buyers Club, charging a monthly fee for treatment.

As I mentioned before, McConaughey’s performance in this film is the best argument to go see it. His Ron Woodruff is a fireball of expletives and emotion, full of anger at losing almost everything to the disease. McConaughey lost 50 pounds to bring Woodruffs changing physical appearance with AIDS to the screen, and he is scarily thin at times. Although he has been best known for romantic comedies and his role as Wooderson ‘Dazed and Confused’, Dallas Buyers Club shows he deserves an Oscar.

Jared Leto delivers an excellent performance as gay transvestite Rayon, Rons assistant. He has a few tragic scenes, and in each Leto really packs a punch. One scene in particular in which Rayon sees is father for the first time in years was really heart wrenching, and that’s mostly thanks to Leto. The other supporting cast did well, but Jennifer Garner and Steve Zahn didn’t really get a chance to do anything too impressive.

The movie looked good for the most part. The documentary camera style really drew me in and it did help to make it feel like it was the 80’s. The only complaint I have with the filmmaking side of things is the small sequence that shows Woodruff going country to country to smuggle antiviral drugs. It wasn’t done very well and looked really artificial. It is a small scratch on an otherwise spotless film, but It was hard not to notice.

‘Dallas Buyers Club’ is worth the price of admission. McConaughey delivers an Academy Award worthy performance, the story is interesting, and a lot of the themes explored are especially effective today. It’s a swearing, Texas version of ‘Philidelphia’ that I highly recommend.

5/5 Stars