Dallas Buyers Club is a well-paced us-against-bureaucracy drama. It’s yet another fine acting performance by its star, Matthew McConaughey, who – in a superb second career phase – has turned in a remarkable spate of winning performances in the past three years (Killer Joe, The Paperboy, Mud, Magic Mike, The Wolf of Wall Street, True Detective). Set in the early panicky days of the AIDS epidemic, it’s the based-on-fact story of a homophobic Texas cowboy who contracts AIDS and wages a guerrilla war against the FDA, Big Pharma and the medical establishment to distribute non-approved but effective medications. Dallas Buyers Club has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar but I found it too formulaic to be THAT good.
The best reason to see Dallas Buyers Club is the supporting performance by Jared Leto as a drag queen. I am generally skeptical about performances that get a lot of buzz because the roles require the actor to take on a handicap or another gender, to age many years or some other flashy crap – but Leto is the real deal here, and he deserves his Academy Award nomination – and I would be pleased if he won the Oscar. He goes beyond the wise cracking queen to plumb many layers of charisma, addiction, self-expression and family rejection. It’s a profoundly affecting and ultimately heartbreaking performance. (And, in a couple early scenes, he’s actually prettier than the female lead Jennifer Garner.)