I wasn’t as impressed by Dallas Buyers Club (Dallas Buyer’s Club? Dallas Buyers’ Club?) as the critics… I found its overall story rather drab in the telling… not as compelling as it wanted to be. Don’t get me wrong, the story is good, the movie wasn’t as good. I’ll admit that it was partly because of an uncomfortable bias I felt the movie had against the Big Pharma and the FDA. I don’t have a problem with the main character here doubting The System, but I felt (as a moviegoer) that I was being Taught a Lesson about how corrupt the system is and how pure or good-intentioned or whatever ALL the non-approved AIDS medications are/were. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not – but the movie had too much of an opinion that I felt like I couldn’t trust what was true in this ostensibly true story. For example, I was pretty sure the early AIDS medication AZT was actually a good thing – I recall the story of the hunt for the drug in the movie And the Band Played On. I get that it wasn’t perfect and it hurt SOME people but Dallas Buyers Club really wanted us to believe (except for a bit of text at the end credits) that the drug was a poison that hurt far more people than it helped.

But it’s not entirely fair to the movie about its political beliefs – a movie isn’t altogether good or bad because it’s about something, it’s good or bad by how it’s about that something. And that’s where the movie just kind of lost me in the second half. I can’t pinpoint anything specific (besides what I mentioned in the previous paragraph)… I just felt that it was grinding its gears, spinning its wheels, until the inevitable conclusion to the story (probably not much of a spoiler to say it ultimately doesn’t end well). I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, it just wasn’t grabbing me like it wanted to.

Now, I saw this movie after Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto won their best actor/supporting actor wins at the Academy Awards. And, yes, they certainly deserve it. And Matthew McConaughey does deserve some credit for losing an unconscionable amount of weight… not Christian Bale in the Machinist amounts of weight but significant for his build, that’s for sure. But it’s ultimately the acting itself that proves he’s taken a turn in his career. I can’t fault either of these guys for the work done here…

Score: 74