Dallas Buyers Club opens in 1985 with a diagnosis and a death sentence. Ron Woodroof, a Dallas electrician and rodeo cowboy, learns he has HIV/AIDS and is told he has about 30 days to live. He does not accept it. What follows is not a story about dying. It is a story about a man who refuses to go quietly, and about the machinery that stands in his way.
Trailer, via DallasBuyersClub.
A Cowboy Who Would Not Fold
Matthew McConaughey plays Woodroof as a man running on nerve and spite. The film is loosely based on a true-life tale, and the script by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack keeps its focus tight. Woodroof is drug-taking, women-loving and homophobic when the diagnosis lands. His friends and family ostracize him, wrongly assuming he contracted AIDS from gay sex. He loses his job. He loses his home. The film does not soften any of it.
McConaughey lost nearly 50 pounds (23 kg) for the role. That fact has been repeated so often it risks becoming trivia, but on screen it reads as something else. The weight loss is not a stunt. It is the physical fact of a man whose body is failing him, and the actor’s face carries the cost of every scene.
The AZT Problem
Dr. Eve Saks, played by Jennifer Garner, tells Woodroof that AZT is the only drug yet approved for testing in human clinical trials by the FDA. Half of the trial patients get the drug. The other half get a placebo. That is the only way to determine whether it works.
Woodroof bribes a hospital worker to get AZT. He is also using cocaine and alcohol. His health deteriorates. The film is clear that the drug, in his hands, is not a cure. It is part of the problem.
Recuperating in the hospital, he meets Rayon, a drug-addicted, HIV-positive trans woman. He is hostile toward her at first. Jared Leto plays Rayon, and the role is fictional — a composite created from interviews with transgender AIDS patients, activists and doctors. Leto lost 30 pounds (13 kg), shaved his eyebrows and waxed his entire body. He said the portrayal was grounded in meeting transgender people while researching. He also said he worked on Rayon’s voice for weeks and refused to break character during filming. Director Jean-Marc Vallée said, “I don’t know Leto. Jared never showed me Jared.”
That is a good line, and it points at what works here. Leto disappears into Rayon without turning her into a lesson.
Dr. Vass and the Mexican Cocktail
Woodroof drives to a makeshift Mexican hospital run by Dr. Vass, an American whose medical license was revoked because his work with people with AIDS violated US regulations. Vass warns Woodroof against AZT, calling it “poisonous.” He prescribes a cocktail of drugs and nutritional supplements centered on ddC and the protein peptide T, which are not yet approved for use in the USA by the FDA.
Three months later, Woodroof’s health is much improved. He realizes he can make money importing the drugs and selling them to other HIV-positive patients. He gets them over the border by masquerading as a priest with cancer, claiming they are for personal use.
This is where the film’s real subject arrives. Woodroof is not a hero in the conventional sense. He is a salesman. Borten said of the real man: “Ron was a very charismatic, funny and persuasive, a real salesman. Even if he was making fun of you, you wanted him to continue because he was so charming.” McConaughey has those qualities, and the film uses them.
The Club and the FDA
Woodroof establishes the “Dallas Buyers Club,” distributing unapproved drugs to fellow people with AIDS. He faces opposition from the FDA. The film treats that opposition as a system, not a villain. Michael O’Neill plays Richard Barkley, an FDA agent and antagonist. Denis O’Hare plays Dr. Sevard. Steve Zahn plays Tucker, a Dallas Police Officer and Ron’s friend. Dallas Roberts plays David Wayne, Ron’s lawyer.
The supporting cast is stacked and mostly underused. Griffin Dunne’s Dr. Vass is a brief, sharp turn. The film has a lot of people in it and not enough time for all of them.
- Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
- Written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
- Runtime: 117 minutes
- Genres: Drama, History
- Tagline: “Dare to live.”
The film’s history is its own story. In 1996, Woody Harrelson was attached to play Woodroof but left over financing issues. In 2002, Brad Pitt was attached to the lead. In June 2008, Ryan Gosling was in talks to join but could not take the role. In 2009, producer Robbie Brenner sent the script to McConaughey. Brenner said she asked herself: “‘Who is Ron Woodroof?’ And in my mind, it was Matthew. Like Ron, he’s from Dallas, he’s handsome, and he has a twinkle in the eye.” McConaughey was raised near Dallas. He said he took the role because it was not a normal story but a story of a “wild man,” and because the script was “incredibly human, with no sentimentality.”
Presidential biographer and PEN-USA winner Bill Minutaglio wrote the first magazine profile of the Dallas Buyers Club in 1992. Borten interviewed Woodroof that same year. The script was polished with Wallack in 2000 and sold to Brenner.
What the Film Gets Right
The film’s best decision is refusing to make Woodroof likable before it makes him understandable. He starts as a homophobe. He ends as a man who has built something with the people he once despised. The arc is not redemption in a tidy sense. It is proximity.
Garner’s Dr. Saks is the film’s conscience, and Garner plays her with restraint. The composite nature of the role shows — she is asked to be a doctor, a witness and a moral counterweight, and the script does not always give her enough to do. On casting, Garner said: “I had heard about it, and I had seen pictures of Matthew losing weight. And really couldn’t imagine how I was going to do it, and was so happy at home.”
Where It Slips
The film is 117 minutes and it moves. Vallée keeps the camera close and the pace brisk. But the third act rushes toward its conclusion, and the FDA conflict resolves more by narrative necessity than by argument. The film is based on a true-life tale, and it knows which parts of that tale it wants. The result is a drama that is more moving than it is rigorous.
The film is a 2013 American biographical drama, and it wears that label carefully. It is not a documentary. It is not a policy brief. It is a character study with a cause attached, and the character is strong enough to carry it.
The Score
Dallas Buyers Club is worth seeing for McConaughey and Leto, and for the way it treats a man who was not admirable and not wrong. The film’s tagline is “Dare to live.” It earns that. It does not earn everything else it reaches for, and the supporting cast deserved more room. But the central performance is a real thing, and the film’s refusal of sentimentality is its sharpest tool. 7.7 of 10.
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