Movie Review – The Dallas Buyers Club

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2013 – spoiler alerts. The remarkable true story of Ron Woodruff, with an exceptional central performance by Matthew McConhaughey as Woodruff, and strong support by Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner. Woodruff was a typical almost stereotypical macho Texan. An electrician, and a rodeo fan, hard drinking, hard partying and rabidly homophobic. It was a total shock to him when he was diagnosed with AIDS and given just thirty days to live. He had caught it from casual unprotected sex with a heroin user. Determined to fight the disease, Woodruff discovered that patients outside the US were often surviving longer because they were using drugs and treatments not yet approved by the US FDA. Woodruff began smuggling the drugs in, both for his own use and for the use of members of the Buyer’s Club. While selling medical drugs to others was illegal, Woodruff got round the rule by forming a membership subscription group, The Buyers Club. The drugs could then be given free to the members. The Dallas group was not the only, or even the first such group, but it drew the strongest media attention as Woodruff found himself in strong conflict with the FDA, FBI and the courts. As many of the club members were gay, Woodruff became increasingly more supportive and sympathetic to the gay community as his campaign endured. Woodruff finally succumbed to AIDS in 1992, seven years after he was told to expect death. A tremendous film, that takes a quite heart-warming look at a difficult subject with Woodruff’s fighting stance showing that even facing terminal illness, we should not go out without a Hell of a fight, against the diseases taking us and any legal or administrative body condemning us to our fate through their indifference to helping us. Arthur Chappell