Dallas Buyers Club

I really appreciated what Dallas Buyers Club was going for.

The injustice of the FDA and the legal system that protected it back in the 80s is at times a shocking reality that for obvious reasons is hardly ever discussed. And while Dallas Buyers Club did dig the conversation back into relevancy, it still managed to leave me confused as to what point they were actually trying to get across.

Perhaps it was the awkward way in which it ended, though I believe that was more a symptom of some rather baffling, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, editorial decisions. Blame the writer, blame the director, blame the editor... blame whoever you like, but in the end Dallas Buyers Club failed to establish its metaphor for the situation we as a people are still struggling through with that other big disease... cancer.

Oops... politics aside, this movie still impressed me. It kept me interested and managed to allow me to enjoy performances from a group of actors I have, over many years of watching, not exactly thought of as superior performers. I think that was the strangest asset of this film for me...

that I finally can say I like Matthew McConaughey as an actor...

that Jared Leto's time on screen was not greeted by groans...

and that even Jennifer Garner could not derail the momentum. To me that's a damn big feat.

So my hat's off to the whole team. Despite a rather unsatisfactorily sloppy ending, Dallas Buyers Club is still a film of quality. One that I will not be surprised to find in Oscar conversations in the coming months.