Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie Review

Awlright, awlright, awlriiight!

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 4, 2014

Of all the whiplash career rebounds we've borne witness to in recent years, Matthew McConaughey's is perhaps the most dramatic. Moving from the likes of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Two for the Money and Failure to Launch to Mud, The Wolf of Wall Street, HBO's True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in just ten short years? It's the kind of turnaround genre castaways and type-castees would sell their firstborns to even have a shot at stumbling into. Not that McConaughey's slingshot trajectory has anything to do with luck. Carefully selected scripts, challenging material, prime indie roles, an all-encompassing commitment to refining his craft and a fearlessness every bit as unflinching as that of Mud, Mark Hanna, Detective Rustin Cohle or Dallas Buyers Club's Ron Woodroof... these are the things that have catapulted McConaughey into the company of the most talented actors of his generation. Where he goes from here is anyone's guess, but if his powerhouse performance in Jean-Marc Vallée's Best Picture contender is any indication, the sky's the limit.

"Oh, I'm the drug dealer?"

July, 1985. To his shock and disbelief, Texas electrician, part-time rodeo cowboy and homophobic womanizer Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) is diagnosed with HIV. But while hospital specialists Dr. Saks (Jennifer Garner) informs him he has just 30 days to live, he's unable to legally acquire the only treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA): an antiretroviral called AZT. Refusing to succumb to his fate, Ron bribes an orderly and lands himself doses of AZT; a drug that, to his dismay, ravages his system more viciously than the disease it's meant to treat. He's so determined to go down swinging, though, that when the orderly cuts him off, Ron makes a beeline for Mexico to get his hands on more. Instead, a disgraced American doctor warns him AZT will kill him before AIDS, and offers a pair of unapproved inhibitors in its place -- ddC and Peptide T -- both of which work like a dream. Ron bounces back, sets his mind to living and breezes past the 30-day mark.

With time back on his side, Ron devises a plan to smuggle large quantities of inhibitors into the country and sell them to others diagnosed with HIV. The subsequent "Dallas Buyers Club" he establishes is an overnight, back-alley success, luring patients away from hospitals by the hundreds and providing them with a real treatment that produces real results. Along the way, he enlists the help of an HIV-positive transgender drug addict named Rayon (Jared Leto), begins receiving assistance and support from his new friends and clientele (many of them homosexuals, a group he once ridiculed and despised), and tries to convince the well-intentioned Dr. Saks that he's onto something she should be involved in. His actions attract plenty of trouble, though, and Woodroof quickly finds himself in a war of wills with border police, the hospital administration, Dr. Saks' superior, Dr. Sevard (Denis O'Hare), Big Pharmaceutical and the full bureaucratic might and authority of the FDA.

Shedding thirty-seven pounds of muscle and rock-jawed southern charm, McConaughey is a ball of fiery, rail-thin intensity, injecting a hint of comic pathos and whiskey-drenched swagger into a role that could have been mired in despair and self-loathing. His Ron Woodroof isn't just a fighter, he's a brash braggart, an inexplicably likable lout, a bigot entrenched in a war with his own bigotry, a calculating entrepreneur, a clever sonuvabitch, a barbed thorn in the side of the FDA, a man on a mission, a friend of the people and, above all, an ever-evolving, ever-growing human being. The "Buyers Club" Woodroof establishes begins as a scheme -- a quick way to make some cash, fund his Mexican excursions and live a juicier life -- but soon surpasses its self-serving roots to become something far more selfless and noble. And Ron right along with it. The film suddenly isn't about a man struggling to cleanse his body, but rather a man struggling to cleanse his soul.

Matching McConaughey drawl for drawl is an award-worthy supporting cast led by Leto (who also lost considerable weight for the film) and backed by Garner, whose rather thankless, potentially unremarkable role is given some much-needed vitality by her spirited performance. Vallée, meanwhile, proves himself an actor's director and an attentive narrative guardian, granting McConaughey and his castmates the freedom to forge their characters without sacrificing the truth of the tale. Too much, that is. Reality takes a back seat to Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack's screenwriting prerogative a bit more often than fact checkers might prefer, with key differences that retain the spirit of Woodroof's story but alter a number of details. (The real Ron Woodroof wasn't a rodeo cowboy, knew he possibly had HIV as early as 1981, fathered a child, and wasn't quite as rough-n-tumble as Dallas Buyers Club portrays.) Still, the blessing of family and those closest to Woodroof says a lot and suggests the nips and tucks made in the script are minimal and inconsequential on the whole. (No need to brace for a Hurricane-sized controversy here.)

Is Dallas Buyers Club the Best Picture of 2013? In an already tight Oscar race, Vallée's triumph only makes choosing one film that much more difficult. Even declaring McConaughey's performance the year's best is a tough sell, with 12 Years a Slave's Chiwetel Ejiofor, American Hustle's Christian Bale, Nebraska's Bruce Dern and The Wolf of Wall Street's Leonardo DiCaprio making this year's Best Actor award one of the most difficult and unpredictable in recent memory. However, if Dallas Buyers Club is declared 2013's Best Picture or Golden Globe-winner Matthew McConaughey earns his first Oscar, it won't be because any other film or performer has been snubbed. McConaughey and Dallas Buyers Club deserve any accolades afforded them.

Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dallas Buyers Club features a faithfully encoded 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 video presentation free of any significant issues. Colors are natural and nicely saturated on the whole, skintones are lifelike, primaries boast occasional punch and black levels are quite satisfying (or at least in keeping with the filmmakers' intentions, muted as they sometimes are). Detail is excellent as well -- with clean edges, refined textures and impressively resolved close-ups -- shadow delineation is solid, and grain is intact. Better still, troublesome macroblocking, banding, aliasing and ringing are nowhere to be found, and the crush and noise that does appear traces back to Yves Bélanger's digital photography, nothing more. The presentation won't exactly turn heads, but it looks every bit as good as it should.

Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Universal's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track sometimes favors restraint and repose over aggression and bombast, but the film's sound design is full of the same swagger and confidence as McConaughey's Ron Woodroof; so much so that the resulting lossless experience is more immersive than I expected. LFE output is raw and ever at the ready, investing believably weighted low-end oomph into everything from the throatiness of a car engine to the explosion of an opening rodeo gate to the drone of muffled background music in a crowded bar. The rear speakers follow suit, impressing without over-playing any hands. Directionality is precise but suitably reserved, ambient effects are convincing, and cross-channel pans are smooth. Dialogue is clear and intelligible at all times too, without anything in the way of prioritization mishaps or buried voices. At the same time, Dallas Buyers Club doesn't indulge in the usual surround sound gimmickry, making for a more understated experience that's in keeping with the film's ever-solidifying dramatic tone.

Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Look Inside Dallas Buyers Club (HD, 4 minutes): A much-too-short, EPK-style trip behind the scenes of the film, with an introduction and intermittent comments from Matthew McConaughey, among other cast members.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 5 minutes): A decent collection of deleted and extended scenes.

Dallas Buyers Club Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are more engrossing dramas than Dallas Buyers Club competing for Best Picture. More remarkably cinematic experiences, more innovative biopics and more visually stunning productions. But there isn't a more moving or timely true story among them, nor one that more poignantly and effectively deals with an issue still very much at the center of social and political debate today: in this case, the right of a terminal patient to control his or her own medical treatment, regardless of FDA approval. And with McConaughey and Leto turning in award-winning, vanity-shunning performances, the film is only that much more powerful. Universal's Blu-ray release is worthy of praise too, although we're once again treated to a much too short, much too forgettable EPK-driven supplemental package. Fortunately, video and audio are dead on, meaning the Best Picture nominee looks and sounds like the potential winner it is.