Matthew McConaughey has been on a real career hot streak these last couple of years years, with great performances in everything from Magic Mike to Mud. That seems unlikely to end given his commitment to true-life tale Dallas Buyers Club**, which has just put its first trailer online over at Apple.
In the film, McConaughey plays Texas cowboy Ron Woodroof, whose freewheeling life was overturned in 1985 when he was diagnosed as HIV-positive and given 30 days to live. These were the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and the US was divided over how to combat the virus.
Woodroof, now shunned and ostracized by many of his old friends and bereft of government-approved effective medicines, decided to take matters in his own hands, tracking down alternative treatments from all over the world by means both legal and illegal.
Bypassing the establishment, the entrepreneurial Woodroof joined forces with an unlikely band of renegades and outcasts - who he once would have shunned - and established a hugely successful “buyers’ club.”
McConaughey dropped 47 pounds – nearly going blind in the process – to play the emaciated Ron as he struggled with his disease. Jennifer Garner also shows up as Dr. Eve Saks, who wants to help Ron, but is constrained by her medical ethics, while Jared Leto is Rayon, a transvestite who starts helping him with the business.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, Dallas Buyers Club is out in the US on December 6, but we’ll have to wait until February 7 to see it in the UK.