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Rating: 5 out of 5
For a brief history of the AIDS epidemic caused by HIV, it found its way to the United States as early as the 1960s. It wasn’t first noticed after doctors discovered pneumonia in gay men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. During the epidemic, many misconceptions were brought up, like where it ultimately came from and how it was passed on from person to person. The nonsense of shaking hands or even sitting next to a person who had AIDS could give you AIDS spread like wildfire until all of it was debunked. Now, treatment of HIV/AIDS is primarily via a “drug cocktail” of antiretroviral drugs and education programs to help people avoid infection.
According to HIV.gov, as of 2018, approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV today. About 14 percent of them (1 in 7) don’t know it and need testing. HIV continues to have a disproportionate impact on specific populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and gay and bisexual men. Some of the most known people have been affected by AIDS/HIV, from actor Charlie Sheen to famous basketball player Magic Johnson to renowned tennis player Arthur Ashe (from a blood transfusion) and so many others.
Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. In the year 1985, in good ole Dallas, TX, electrician and sometimes rodeo bull rider Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) lives hard and even parties harder, including heavy smoking and hard-drinking cocaine baby, and having unprotected sex with any woman he wants but mainly prostitutes. Ron is also a smart mouth, racist and homophobic person. Not a person you want to be around. Maybe back in the min-1980s, but sure as hell not right now. Ron’s world is turned upside down and all over when he is rushed to the hospital from a work-related injury and discovers that he is HIV+ and from his hard-living lifestyle only has thirty days to live. That some serious news to take in, but Ron doesn’t believe what he is hearing and decides to do the one thing he knows best, party hard, but soon reality hits him like a ton of bricks.
Ron is soon ostracized by family and friends who mistakenly assume he contracted AIDS from homosexual relations. He soon gets fired from his job and is eventually evicted from his home. At the hospital, he is tended to by Dr. Eve Saks (Garner), who tells him that they are testing a drug called zidovudine (AZT). This antiretroviral drug is thought to prolong the life of AIDS patients. Ron soon starts bribing for the drug until he is cut off and soon back in the hospital. Ron meets Rayon (Leto) in the hospital, a drug-addicted, HIV-positive trans woman, to whom he is initially hostile. With options running out, Ron drives to a little hospital in Mexico to get more AZT. He meets Dr. Vass at the hospital, who has had his American medical license revoked because aspects of his work with AIDS patients had violated U.S. regulations. Vass tells Ron that AZT is poison and kills you faster than AIDS. He instead prescribes a cocktail of drugs and nutritional supplements centered on ddC and the protein peptide T, which are not yet approved in the U.S. Three months later, Woodroof finds his health much improved. With this new revelation and living past the thirty-day mark, it occurs to Ron that he could make money by importing the drugs and selling them to other HIV-positive patients. Ron and Rayon come up with the bright idea to smuggle the drugs that are not FDA approved and sell them to the patients to extend their life. As Ron and his business grow, they are soon become the FDA’s target and are shut down at every turn. Ron must soon fight for survival against the very department that is meant to protect them.
The HIGHLIGHT of this film is the performances and physical transformations of McConaughey and Leto. You want to talk about transforming into a role, then look no further than these two individuals because they went all out to portray scrawny HIV patients in the film. Both actors won for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for their respective roles, and they completely deserved them.
McConaughey did the thing in this film. Gone were the box office bombs and questionable roles that made him look dimwitted, and in return, he brought the ultimate A-game and evolved himself in a role that brought him gold. As the foul mouth, pain in the ass Ron, he brought humility to the person who wanted to fight for his life and soon the ones around him.
Leto is known for his extreme commitment to his roles, and he didn’t hold back. The dude was a straight-up stick figure but pulled off Rayon beautifully. His mannerisms and his struggle with drugs really brought this character to life and to the forefront. You did the damn thing, Leto.
As for the story, it is hard for me to feel sorry for the character Ron. The dude was an asshole who did drugs and had sex with any girl that moved. He only took up this so-called crusade was because he found out the stuff they were giving him in the hospital was killing him, and he had to go all the way to Mexico to get right. Even then, he portrayed himself as a priest and set out to make money off of the illness he had. The dude straight hustled for his own than anyone else, and he treated Rayon poorly even if he was trying to help.
Since he was selling medicine illegally, that caught the FDA’s eye, who seems corrupt in their own right by saying he couldn’t do it but put on their list that some of the stuff was legal. This lead Ron to take up this Robin Hood-type role and help the people survive. It got to the point where people were giving him a house just to make them survive longer.
The film also does a great job showing how people viewed the virus. A person with AIDS or HIV was condemned, and people thought that if they touched them or were even near them, they could contract the disease. Thank you for research coming along and proving that wrong. The film showed this when Ron’s house was ravaged, and he was evicted along with losing his job. Another way when Ron’s former friend wouldn’t talk to him in the store, and he made him shake Rayon’s hand.
All this left me in wonder, and that is how good this film is. Jean-Marc Vallée did a masterful job making you feel for the characters and showing how they looked with a close-up on their face. You could almost feel their pain and fear with a disease they had no hope of surviving. Jean-Marc Vallée should be applauded for that and the direction he showed with a subject that is not easy to display but has taken many lives.
Dallas Buyers Club is a great film to watch just for the performances of McConaughey and Leto. They brought their A-Game performance of a lifetime and should be applauded for it. The story and direction are amazing to watch, and you see how far some of the research has come to fight and keep people alive from this virus.
