Dallas Buyers Club review

As I first realised that I would see a film with two Academy awards I set my expectations a little high. The theme was promising: a man finds out that he has only days left because he is HIV positive and has developed AIDS.

At first there are some really harsh scenes giving an insight in the life of a lonely cowboy living in the ‘80s. Sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll we could say, but behind the filthy scenes it can be felt that he is disconnected from the world and is in a deep sorrow. There is something in the air as he faces strange symptoms. We already know what his diagnosis is.

The acting from Matthew McConaughey is fantastic and brilliant at this point (and it remains poignant) as he depicts the fight against the fact that his character (Ron Woodroof: what a promising name!) has only a few days left according to the doctors.

At that time (1980’s) the medical industry and the FDA actually did hamper such desperate fights against AIDS insisting on the regular way of the legalisation of medicines too, so our dying hero starts to buy them illegal. He travels to Mexico and starts to import them and tries to make his fortune: he starts a buyers club: the members of which automatically getting the daily and working dose against AIDS if they pay the membership fee regularly. Most of the patients come from the homosexual community. A big problem for Ron is that he must break his prejudice against “fags”. He makes friends with another AIDS patient, a transsexual man, Rayon (Jared Leto, who acts perfectly) to open a way to this society. They succeed and in little time he has hundreds of patients who are disappointed with the health care system of that time. But the system fights back and slowly Ron loses the battle against the illness and the FDA.

After a few months he loses Rayon too who had become his best friend. Another good friend of him is Eve, the local doctor who realises the insanity of the bureaucratic health system too.

As he is slowly losing everything in his life his personality develops good way. He starts to feel true love, finally he finds friends and calms down inside. He realises that he has got only one life which is short. He opens his eyes to see the beauty of this unique life and continues the fight against the evil system in the name of the community of the AIDS patients.

My favorite scene is when Ron enters Eve’s room in the hospital and asks her out to one of his drug runs to Mexico. Eve - needless to say - refuses this invitation, but Ron answers: “I knew you'd rain on my party, but I had to give it a shot”. This was a good lesson to me: to take the courage to live because I - as everybody on this planet - am infected with a lethal disease: life.