Dallas Buyers Club

Not much happens in "Dallas Buyers Club."  It's a boring movie.

It feels weird to say that.  There are a lot of movies in which not much happens that I don't find boring at all.  I love character studies, movies that focus on getting to know someone instead of plot mechanics.

But "Dallas Buyers Club" isn't interested in burrowing into the psyche of any of its characters.  It's got an inspirational story to tell, and it's going to tell it, even if there isn't much to the tale.

The film is based on the life of Ron Woodroof, a hard living cowboy who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1985.  Early on, the movie gets locked into a cycle: Woodroof finds some illegal medication that improves his condition, sells it to fellow patients, and gets shut down by the Food and Drug Administration.  Then he finds some new medication--or new illegal means of transport--and the cycle starts all over again.

That cycle basically takes up the last three-quarters of the film.  There's a little bit of other business; Woodroof is homophobic, so naturally he must see the error of his ways, and Jennifer Garner stars as a sad-looking doctor who is eventually converted to the cowboy's cause.  It all just adds to the melodrama.  Director Jean-Marc Vallee tries to make the story seem more edgy with handheld camerawork and quick editing.  And Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto both give fine, if occasionally showy, performances as AIDS patients.

And it must be said that this is yet another Hollywood tale of the privileged helping the powerless.  American film history is littered with stories of whites helping blacks and straights helping gays.  In real life, the privileged are usually the problem, not the solution.