Matthew McConaughey delivers what I see as his best performance to date in Dallas Buyer’s Club, a movie great enough in its own right in telling its own incredibly compelling story but made remarkable by what McConaughey brings. Add Jared Leto, whose acting trumps McConaughey’s, and this is indeed a must-see film.
The story, which delivers the viewer without detour squarely to the 80s, simultaneously made me cringe over the hurtful discriminatory nature of society and celebrate the advances we’ve made—in opinion, openness, tolerance, and medicine. This isn’t to say we don’t have a long way to go, but we have come far in these last thirty years.
I am still mulling over the deep commentaries the movie makes on medical research, big pharmaceuticals, and care for the ill, all as compared to other countries’ contrasted approaches to those areas. And let us not forget that McConaughey’s character wasn’t exactly selfless; to the contrary, I suspect that if he suddenly learned his diagnosis had been incorrect, he would have abandoned his quest to help so many people. But that’s my take, and we’ll never know.