Film review: Dallas Buyers Club

I will never truly be able to compare inspiring drama films to pure action/horror. They go out to do very separate things and please different people. What I try to do is rate how into it I was, or how well it does its job whatever it is. More often than not the films I have reviewed have enticed me and hooked me, however, Dallas Buyers Club is a humbling, but entertaining watch.

I skimmed the description of the movie, almost bored of it before the sentence finished. I went into the film very unfamiliar with Ron’s archetype, a bigot electrician from the south of the US. I think you were supposed to grimace at the character, maybe even start to dehumanise him. What made me really sit up and pay attention was how quickly I changed my tune on him based off ‘the big problem’, his raw emotion and grief was the start of huge respect on my part for the talent of Mathew McConaughey. There were no average performances in this film, but I just have to give the spotlight to him and Jared Leto, whose characters were not only intriguing but had legendary chemistry and growth over the timeline. I very much believed the emotion displayed from the both of them and that really helped with my empathy understanding the storyline.

Next is a spoiler but no more than what you’d read about the plot in general, the insight, education and feeling this film created around the problems with HIV aids was so daunting. As an individual it’s hard to be fully invested in all the problems around the world, but films such as this have and will continue to be a great way to ease in that awareness, while entertaining you also with great characters.

I won’t say I was more entertained in this film than I was John Wick for instance, but just the complexity of the task and the emotion it displayed at times gives it the tiniest nudge onto the next scale. I’ll watch better films with the same grading but it just had to be on that level for me.

Rating: 9/10