Dallas Buyers Club Reviews

Like everyone else, I was very pleased by Matthew McConaughey's come-back but who would have expected him to win an Academy award so fast following this welcome renaissance? With this in mind, I was really eager to check this flick and I wasn't disappointed. I mean, pretty much like when Ben Affleck was called the worst actor in the world, I always believed that McConaughey had some potential, he just needed to pick up some decent material and, here, he goes all the way giving one hell of a performance. Concerning the story itself, it was definitely a strong tale, even though not everything did work. For example, I had a rather hard time to care for Jennifer Garner's character and, later on, I discovered that this woman was actually made up for the film which made this character even more superfluous. Apparently, even Jared Leto's character didn’t exist either so, even though Leto was pretty strong, I find it rather difficult to justify the addition of this transvestite. I mean, it seemed like a cheap way to get some attraction with a misfit embodying some of the most common stereotypes about HIV patients at the time. To conclude, even though it wasn’t really flawless, thanks to a really impressive McConaughey, I really enjoyed the damned thing and I think it is definitely worth a look.

Dallas Buyers Club may be a homophobes nightmare seeing as if you don't actually watch it you might think it is this years Brokeback Mountain. Well it isn't while it does have several gay themes and is about AIDS it deals with a person of straight orientation dealing with it in times when it was still thought that homosexuals were the only ones with the disease. It also deals with medical law and treatment of people with AIDS/HIV and ways to treat them better than the hospitals could. It also helps that the cast is amazing with Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Steve Zahn, Denis O'Hare, and Dallas Roberts. The actors really worked hard to make this a great picture of the sad realness that was going on in those times. In my opinion Jared Leto's performance as Rayon was remarkable and probably the best of the movie. This movie was very well made. I definitely say that this is a must see even for the homophobic pool. I feel that the content could really speak to everyone. You shouldn't discriminate someone for any reason because you never know what will happen and how some things could also turn out to have an affect on you as well.

Here is a film that is trying to be two different ones at once, and ends up being merely adequate versions of both. If it wasn’t for Matthew McConaughey’s impressive and strong central performance, Dallas Buyers Club would fold under its own weight and confusion over just which type of movie this is. What wins out more, unfortunately, is Hollywood feel-good hogwash about a scrappy little guy fighting against a large goliath entity. The better film is the character study of a leathery rascal who looks imminent death in the face and says, in a Texan drawl, “Not today.”

Long ago I had written off McConaughey as a tanned himbo – a nice body, charming accent and not much else to offer up. While I thought he was the weakest of the three leads in Bernie that doesn’t mean I thought he was bad by any stretch, he was just stuck with the straight-man role. But I bring up Bernie because it was the first time I had ever noticed the actor hiding inside of the man who had made such terrible choices as How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past. And he has continued on with that hot streak – a small role in The Wolf of Wall Street is perfectly oily as he’s the man who brings DiCaprio’s character into the drugs-and-sex hedonism and underworld of Wall Street trading, and he’s gotten great reviews for his work in Magic Mike, Mud, The Paperboy and Killer Joe, films which I unwisely avoided due to his name being attached and having unfair expectations over what exactly they are and his having rarely, if ever, displayed any versatility or depth as an actor.

But here we are, with McConaughey as the front-runner to win Best Actor at the Oscars, and me not only impressed with his work, but rather hoping he’ll actually win the damn thing and continue on with these challenging roles and for-the-art subject matter. It’s damn fine performance, and not just for the drastic weight loss. His skeletal frame is unnerving to stare at, but it’s the way he refuses to make his character easy to love, preferring to keep him a bit of a rascal and fighter even as the film is charging towards a Hollywood-style redemption arc. He does great work here, and anything that works effectively in the film is because of the graceful balancing act he does with the role.

But Dallas Buyers Club is loaded with problems. Denis O’Hare and Jennifer Garner turn in fine work, but their characters feel entirely superfluous. An abortive sub-plot sees a semi-romance between Garner and McConaughey that goes nowhere slowly, while she’s also involved with a tenuous friendship with Jared Leto’s doomed trans-woman Rayon.

Being entirely inconsequential to the plot is one thing, but creating a trans character to serve only as the spring board for a homophobe’s transition into being less of an asshole is just condescending. Leto is fine in the role, but he doesn’t do anything truly extraordinary with it besides lose a lot of weight, cry on command and toss off sassy quips. Rayon is given no interior life, no backstory, no reasoning for existing aside from providing hollow and false moments, the kind that present the lead character as more likeable, like when McConaughey forces a former friend into giving Leto a handshake. It rings entirely false as a scene. Rayon feels like a character from another era, the hetero’s goofy sidekick who is an outlandish other, but basically a harmless eunuch who exits the story once the hero has become softer and more tolerant.

This doesn’t even begin to describe the problem of hetero-washing McConaughey’s character, turning him from a bisexual cowboy into a homophobic heterosexual asshole that can be redeemed. This brand of story-telling is basically an off-shoot of “White Savior” hokum. Out of all the stories to tell about AIDS, its enduring ugly legacy, the gay community and redemption why change so much from the real one? Why tell it this way? An even worse offense is to pretend that there were only small pockets at this time, when ACT-UP was organizing mass protests. So much of the truth is left out of Dallas Buyers Club that it’s both shocking and not. Well, I guess there’s a pretty solid reason that this film was somehow, inexplicably nominated for Best Original Screenplay. I have got to say that while I rarely expect Hollywood to craft a complicated and unflinching look at any historical subject without changing whole cloth much of the truth, I rarely expect this much revisionist history and pigeon-holing into tidy story conventions.

Day by day, movie by movie he's getting better and better. Who? Matthew McConaughey. I thought 'The Lincoln Lawyer' was his best, but then 'Mud' came and I was shocked about his performance. Now even better in this movie, in fact the best from all of them. The first thing popped out in my mind was the Christian Bale's 'The Machinist'. Because of his weight reduce for the role in the movie was phenomenal. In this movie as well McConaughey did same homework for a movie character and it was just awesome.

You can ask anybody who saw the movie will say McConaughey's performance was astonishing. But you know what I surprised in the movie other than him, Jared Leto. You will gonna observe his next best performance in here only after 'Mr. Nobody'. Yeah, I was shocked by his appearance, he totally had the movie along with McConaughey.

The movie was based on the real story about a person from the 80s who had HIV+. The movie briefs his struggle to survive against the dangerous disease as well fight against the law. The story was very good, it says 'no matter what, you never give up'. How far would you go to fight in order to survive when law and medicine failed its duty along with losing your best buddies. It was just like the other perspective of story to 'Puncture' where a man fights to prevent spreading this same disease.

If 'The Machinist' for Christian Bale then 'Dallas Buyers Club' for Matthew McConaughey. He nailed it, the character was totally looked like from the state of Texas and none others would have done like him. Definitely one of the front runners for OSCAR in the best actor category. This great performance will be a biggest breakthrough in his career for sure. And that makes he's in watch-out list from now on.