DALLAS BUYERS CLUB IS A BIOPIC OF A HEALTH CARE RADICAL
Ron Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey) was an electrician in Dallas who exemplified the macho culture of Texas. He engaged in a lot of drinking, took drugs, got into fights, swore profusely, was an occasional bronco buster, and had an active sex life. In 1985, after a fight put him in the hospital, he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and told that he had only 30 days to live. But he survived until 1992, and Dallas Buyers Club tells his rambunctious quest to stay alive. He is first put into a blind clinical trial for a drug abbreviated as AZT, so he does not know whether he is getting the medicine or not. Then he collects cash from hiding places in his trailer and goes to México (and later to France, Israel, and Japan) to buy AZT and other meds from an American physician, Dr. Meyer (Logan Douglas Smith), who runs an AIDS clinic. He buys AZT and other meds, including vitamins, to sell to HIV-afflicted Texans. Cleverly, he passes through the border dressed as a priest, pretending that the medicines and vitamins are for his own personal use. When he returns to Dallas, he asks a lawyer to set up a nonprofit corporation, the Dallas Buyers Club, and sells memberships for $400 monthly. The club then plans to distribute the medicines to those with HIV free, so he believes that he will not be doing anything illegal, sustained by the distinction between “unapproved” and “illegal” drugs. To invite memberships from those with HIV, he agrees to partner with Rayon, a transsexual (Jared Leto). Although he is confronted by IRS and other law enforcement efforts to shut him down, his support within the gay and transgendered community sustains him. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, there is a fast pace throughout the film, which prefers action instead of explanations. Charismatic Woodroof continues his wild lifestyle, encounters and roughs up homophobic peers, and disrupts the health establishment, provoking Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), a female hospital physician to quit her job to support him. The enemy throughout is the Food and Drug Administration’s refusal to approve drugs for those desperate to live, and one brief news clip features a demonstration of HIV sufferers in front of their office. The film implies that Woodroof was responsible for faster FDA approval of new drugs for HIV, and a title at the end incorrectly attributes AZT for saving thousands of lives (more accurately, prolonging their lives). Nevertheless, the Political Film Society has nominated Dallas Buyers Club for best film exposé of 2013. MH