Dallas Buyers Club

Rating: 6/10

Duration: 2 hours

The protagonist is Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a bull ridin', trailer park-dwellin', moustache-havin' macho Texan manly-man. Following an accident, Ron is hospitalised. The doctors run some standard tests on him and it turns out that he's HIV positive. They tell him his condition is already at an advanced stage (“…frankly, we were surprised you're even alive”) and they estimated he has 30 days left to live. Needless to say, Ron does not take this news well. After some, err, 'soul-searching', he returns to the hospital for a cure, for medicine, for anything that'll put off the inevitable. However the upcoming cure in the United States is still in its test phase, meaning that even if he signed up for the testing, there would be no guarantee as to whether he'd receive the real pills or a placebo. So he shows the doctor a list of other drugs in other countries and says he would like to acquire them. She says he can't get them because they are not government approved. In an effort to assist him, she gives him the details of a support group. “I'm dying,” He replies, pauses for dramatic effect, then continues, “And you're telling me to get a hug from a bunch of [Harley-riders]?”
This scene in particular was brilliantly acted out by Matthew McConaughey. It wasn't just this though, throughout the movie McConaughey became Ron several times. The moustache helps. This is not the same guy I saw in “Tropic Thunder”, “Night at the Museum” or “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. Nope, definitely not the same guy from “Night at the Museum”.
I know I might have said too much already but I'll end it by informing the readers that the plot is not clichéd. Ron does not live life to the fullest with whatever little time he has remaining. He does not join the support group and find an unlikely friend.
I'd say the themes in “Dallas Buyers Club” are how bureaucracy and red tape may tie progress down and how we don't have a say in what we can do with ourselves. Impending death affects us all. Since the day he was diagnosed with HIV, Ron changed. The movie is nice; I like it. Have you ever read those large Wikipedia pages where the details of something are laid out? We start reading those with an uninformed opinion and close to zero knowledge, but we read and we learn. By the time we are finished reading, we've experienced an increase in mental wealth and now have grounds for our judgement. “Dallas Buyers Club” feels wholesome like that and by the time the movie ends, you'll be left feeling satisfied. I think it is a decent movie worth the watch.