Dallas Buyers Club (15.)
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Steve Zahn, Denis O’Hare and Michael O’Neill. 117 mins
At the start of Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaughey is diagnosed with full blown AIDs and a side order of Robert Downey Junior Syndrome, a condition that makes a performer’s dialogue largely guesswork. That distinctive Texas burr of his is more drawl than words; a make-out-maybe-every-other-word proposition.
Ron Woodruff, his character, is a red neck devotee of rodeo and skirt and is as indignant at contracting a fag disease as he is devastated at being given 30 days to live. So he heads down to Mexico to find some unregulated drugs from a struck off doctor that improve his condition, as well as making his dialogue a lot more comprehensible. It’s the mid-eighties and “the gay plague” is just hitting and Woodruff, a natural born hustler, hits on the idea that there may be some money to make here.
Dallas Buyer Club is a full blown Oscar Pleader but without most of the unpleasant symptoms. It is the kind of film of where the actors are showered with awards and acclaimed as “brave” because they go on diets. Both McConaughey and Leto have lost enough weight to play concentration camp victims and Leto is doubly brave because he has to wear dresses and pretend to be gay. It’s the kind of movie where you wait in fear of the invasion of mush, but thankfully it never arrives. Although the narrative charts the classic redemptive arcs – homophobic man gets Aids and becomes a better person – McConaughey’s Woodruff doesn’t lose his rougher edges and you never feel like the film is giving you the soft soap.
What keeps the film honest is its righteous anger at the Federal Drug Administration, who ruthlessly try to thwart his efforts to help people, in order to protect the market share of the company that is pushing AZT as the best palliative. (Throughout the film AZT is described as poison though the end credits tell us that it is effective in smaller doses.)
McConaughey is mightily impressive (again) and also enormously watchable in a film that isn’t instantly appealing. There is a long queue round the block waiting to tell you Jared Leto is amazing in this film, which he isn’t, but he does the role really well. Only Jennifer Garner, playing the conscientious doctor who understands, lets the side down. She seems to have wandered in from some other greatly inferior film.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Steve Zahn, Denis O’Hare and Michael O’Neill. 117 mins
At the start of Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaughey is diagnosed with full blown AIDs and a side order of Robert Downey Junior Syndrome, a condition that makes a performer’s dialogue largely guesswork. That distinctive Texas burr of his is more drawl than words; a make-out-maybe-every-other-word proposition.
Ron Woodruff, his character, is a red neck devotee of rodeo and skirt and is as indignant at contracting a fag disease as he is devastated at being given 30 days to live. So he heads down to Mexico to find some unregulated drugs from a struck off doctor that improve his condition, as well as making his dialogue a lot more comprehensible. It’s the mid-eighties and “the gay plague” is just hitting and Woodruff, a natural born hustler, hits on the idea that there may be some money to make here.
Dallas Buyer Club is a full blown Oscar Pleader but without most of the unpleasant symptoms. It is the kind of film of where the actors are showered with awards and acclaimed as “brave” because they go on diets. Both McConaughey and Leto have lost enough weight to play concentration camp victims and Leto is doubly brave because he has to wear dresses and pretend to be gay. It’s the kind of movie where you wait in fear of the invasion of mush, but thankfully it never arrives. Although the narrative charts the classic redemptive arcs – homophobic man gets Aids and becomes a better person – McConaughey’s Woodruff doesn’t lose his rougher edges and you never feel like the film is giving you the soft soap.
What keeps the film honest is its righteous anger at the Federal Drug Administration, who ruthlessly try to thwart his efforts to help people, in order to protect the market share of the company that is pushing AZT as the best palliative. (Throughout the film AZT is described as poison though the end credits tell us that it is effective in smaller doses.)
McConaughey is mightily impressive (again) and also enormously watchable in a film that isn’t instantly appealing. There is a long queue round the block waiting to tell you Jared Leto is amazing in this film, which he isn’t, but he does the role really well. Only Jennifer Garner, playing the conscientious doctor who understands, lets the side down. She seems to have wandered in from some other greatly inferior film.
