“Dallas Buyers Club” is Great Drama

dallas-buyers-club-movie-poster-2013-1020768713Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club (B+) is a powerful true story about an unlikely pioneer in HIV/AIDS drug treatment as embodied by Matthew McConaughey in a role that stretches him beyond anything folks have ever seen him do. His macho, emaciated and homophobic hero, coupled with a sympathetic doctor (Jennifer Garner) and a transgendered business associate (Jared Leto), experiences stages of rage, regret and redemption. Although the film squanders some of the narrative potential this trio could have plumbed, the film is nonetheless biting, bittersweet and insightful; and McConaughey is every bit as award-worthy as you may have heard, with his sly, sinewy delivery all the more poignant as he races against time to save himself and an adopted community. He and Garner erase the ghosts of rom coms past with this melodrama that often confounds expectations. Very much in the vein of People vs. Larry Flynt and certainly recommended.