While not the opening salvo of Oscar season, Dallas Buyers Club quickly sets itself up as a forerunner. A stunning performance by Matthew McConaughey–who is barely recognizable as himself –with the equally brilliant Jared Leto, and a quiet, understated, but not to be overlooked, performance by Jennifer Gardner, combined with an almost flawless story of the triumph of human spirit during one of the darker times in recent US history all combine to create a truly remarkable cinematic experience.

Based on the true story of Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), an electrician and a rodeo cowboy in Dallas, Texas–a blue-collar hero who works hard and parties harder–who is diagnosed with AIDS and given one month to live. An opening sequence of bull riding, graphic sex, cocaine use and gambling give, in under five minutes, a whole picture of the man before: a bigoted, addicted, homophobic good ol’ boy, living in a trailer and listening to Willie Nelson.

Everything changes when after Woodroof’s diagnosis. This is 1985—only a few years after HIV/AIDS had stopped being referred to as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) and was still considered by most of the country as a homosexual disease—and Woodroof reacts characteristically, shouting at the doctors (Denis O’Hare as Dr. Sevard and Jennifer Garner as Dr. Eve Saks) that he isn’t a ‘motherf*cking faggot.’

The movie then explores how this cowboy with a heart of coal became the runner of one of the largest buyer clubs in the US; a club known for its outrageous risks, and some say, its high cost. Buyer clubs were essentially HIV/AIDS medication co-ops; people diagnosed with the disease—mostly gay men—would buy a membership, and with the money, the clubs would purchase medicine not available in the United States (types of medication range from herbs like milk thistle to experimental treatments like DDC and Compound Q but also antibiotics like clarithromycin) due to restrictions imposed by the FDA—some claim unfair restrictions set by the FDA as a ‘favor’ to Big Pharma in order for their drug, AZT, to be sold. AZT was known to be highly toxic with limited efficacy, and was also the most expensive medication on the market at $10,000 a year for a prescription.

McConaughey’s Woodroof rages against his fate and then digs in, applying his logical mind and burning intensity to solving the problem of how to live with HIV/AIDs. He discovers alternative remedies available across the border in Mexico (namely Peptide-T) and sees not only the possibility of not-dying, but also a money making opportunity. His cowboy persona and clear dislike of the homosexual culture scares off the majority of his potential customer base—loaded down with drugs, and able to offer a management of the disease—and looking at making a possible fortune; Woodroof turns to Rayon (Jared Leto) a fellow AIDS patient of Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner)–and a transsexual–to help bridge a connection to a gay community in Dallas. The two eventually form the Dallas Buyers Club, which at its height has a reported 7000 members in the Dallas area.

McConaughey lost a reported 50 pounds for this film, and Leto 35. The two are emaciated for most of the movie. That quality—that translucent thinness—that marked so many people in the 80’s and early 90’s haunts the film throughout, not just in McConaughey and Leto but in the men and women who come through the club.  The image of the lesion-covered, skeletal AIDS patient has faded from our social consciousness and The Dallas Buyers Club brings it back, unremorsefully but rarely self-righteously.

McConaughey’s lightning grin and easy charm are all but burnt out in Woodroof; by his lifestyle and the disease—they flash out occasionally, disarmingly, finding you unawares and making you catch your breath—and his journey through Woodroof’s life—from diagnosis to denial to vocal opponent of the FDA’s drug approval practices—is whole and lived in. It is one of McConaughey’s great performances, in a year filled with them, in a movie filled with them.

Leto, who had semi-retired from acting to follow his music career (he and his brother are members of the band 30 Seconds from Mars), came back to Hollywood because of the power and depth of this role. As Woodroof’s partner in the Dallas Buyer’s Club, Rayon, Leto fills the screen with a manic gaiety that only thinly covers the panicked fear—and anger–of a dying man. Though Leto walks dangerously close to a cliché at times, he redeems it with a heartbreaking and sincere understanding of his plight.

Very little is done to soften the lifestyle lived by either man, rather the movie shows them flawed—and somewhat proud of their flaws—fighting only to be seen as not so much dying from a disease, but rather trying to live with it.

Garner gives what would be in any other movie a tour-de-force (if a little underwritten) performance as the quiet, logical doctor assigned to both Rayon and Woodruff, who slowly changes from a doubting-but-following-the-rules doctor of the establishment to fully speaking out against the treatment options for HIV/AIDS patients in the US. However, her performance is so quiet, so soft, that it is easy to overlook it amongst McConaughey’s and Leto’s flamboyant acts.

If some of the other supporting cast seem somewhat one-dimensional, fulfilling predictable plot points routinely; and if the FDA is cast as a the bad guy somewhat against historical record, the movie manages to breeze past these snags, mostly on the strength of its three leads.

Aside from one or two minor finger wagging moments, director Jean Marc Vallee ensures that the film doesn’t preach, and he and cinematographer Yves Belanger create a vivid world of Wranglers and Dodge trucks, queens and cocaine, rodeo and the FDA, culminating in a  well-conceived, crafted and excellently acted film.

Dallas Buyers Club is a Focus Features release, and is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for ‘‘pervasive language, some strong sexual content, nudity and drug use.’’  The film opens in select theaters on November 1^st and opens wide on November 22^nd.

4/5