In 1986 Texas, the hell-raising, fast-living Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is the swaggering embodiment of the trailer park outlaw. An electrician and part-time rodeo bull-rider, Ron has a boundless appetite for booze, cocaine, gambling, and women. He is also dreadfully ill. In the opening scenes of the engaging and uncommonly handsome Dallas Buyers Club, Woodroof is already distressingly haggard and wracked with a debilitating cough. He is soon shocked to discover that he has full-blown AIDS and roughly a month to live. Fueled by equal parts denial, rage, and old-fashioned Lone Star stubbornness, Woodroof researches unapproved drug treatments, which he then obtains through theft and bribery. Defiant in the face of his prognosis and unable to suppress his hustler nature, Woodroof soon becomes ambitious. An encounter with HIV-positive trans woman Rayon (Jared Leto) sparks a scheme. Together, the pair begin smuggling experimental drugs into the U.S. from Mexico and points beyond, and then selling them to AIDS-afflicted Texans through monthly "memberships."
Adapted by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack from Bill Minutaglio's 1992 Dallas Life Magazine article about Woodruff's underground "buyers club," the film presents a standard tale of resolve and redemption in which a man finds purpose only when life deals him a supremely grim hand. The screenplay is mostly unadventurous, and a little too eager to laud Woodroof as an anti-establishment hero and to demonize breakthrough anti-retroviral AZT as a poisonous misstep. The cast and crew, however, work overtime to provide an artistic spark to the film. Building on his burgeoning body of memorable roles in recent years, McConaghey adeptly conveys Woodroof's live-wire attitude and his conversion of despair into nose-thumbing, wildcat momentum. However, what ultimately lifts Dallas Buyers Club above its well-worn outlines and political timidity is Jean-Marc Vallée's marvelous direction, with vigorous assists from cinematographer Yves Bélanger and co-editor Martin Pensa. Simply put, Buyers Club is a great-looking film, one that is perpetually adding aesthetic swerves and affecting touches to an otherwise mundane, award-baiting story.
