In 1985 Dallas, electrician and hustler Ron Woodroof works around the system to help AIDS patients get the medication they need after he is himself diagnosed with the disease.
Dallas Buyers Club takes McConaughey onwards and upwards via the meaty, murky, true-life story of Ron Woodroof.
Inevitably, there’s a familiar redemptive arc to Dallas Buyers Club, but the crossover to altruism is so sneakily done here that it is irresistible.
Hallmark stuff, elevated by on-screen class.
Get this — Matthew McConaughey is currently the most exciting acting talent at work in movies. Next up, the simple business of a Christopher Nolan.
Like McConaughey’s Woodruff, it is honest and hard-edged and all the more powerful and absorbing for it.
If not wholly convincing as an ‘issues’ movie, this memoir is a triumph as an actors’ showcase; with McConaughey and Leto giving the performances of their careers.
A calculated prestige picture that never bothers to ask broader questions about the AIDS epidemic.
Oscars near-cert.
Matthew McConaughey cements his position as a ‘serious’ actor with an exceptional lead performance.
Dallas Buyers Club is a truly contradictory affair: a rousing crowd-pleaser dealing with the most downbeat subject imaginable – a man contracting HIV and slowly dying of an Aids-related condition.
McConaughey is so charismatic that, as a simple one-man-against-the-odds drama, Dallas Buyers Club is consistently engaging; almost, despite Woodroof's intentions, inspirational.
Its politics appear conservative, but this Reagan-era story of a heterosexual 'good ol' boy' who imports and sells Aids therapies has a barnstorming performance from Matthew McConaughey.
Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto deliver Oscar-worthy performances in the unlikely story of a redneck with Aids and a transgender activist.
It’s an intelligent and sensitively handled film nonetheless, one that, thanks to McConaughey, doesn’t pull its punches.
Woodroof’s story is an essential reminder of lessons which are perhaps not yet fully learned.
Matthew McConaughey on Dallas Buyers Club: 'I became almost hyper'
Jared Leto heckled for 'trans-misogyny' in Dallas Buyers Club
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Monday April 14, 2014, until Sunday April 20, 2014. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
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