Although loosely based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club is mostly a character study of one man's personal journey. Through most of his life Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) functioned on auto-pilot, spending his days piecing together a meager living as an electrician and rodeo cowboy and his nights in a haze of gambling, drugs, and casual sex under the influence. When he is diagnosed with AIDS his not particularly great life collapses around him.

While AIDS affected people from many walks of life in South Africa it was perceived, in the United States, as a disease reserved for homosexuals, and immediately the heterosexual Woodroof is ostracized by friends, loses his job and is evicted from his home. He hears that a local hospital is doing trials for a drug called AZT. He pays an orderly to steal him some. After that wellspring dries up he goes to Mexico to find an illegal prescription for it. The doctor informs him that the AZT doses are toxic and "destroys every cell it comes in contact with". He is prescribed ddC and peptide T, neither of which is legal within the USA. The company that produces AZT and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are both keeping these products off the market in order to push their approved drug at a major premium. Woodroof gets the idea to start selling the drugs for profit and enlists the help of a transgender woman named Rayon (Jared Leto) to market it to the gay community. Eventually they start the titular Buyers Club, which exploits a loophole in US law to legally (well, more or less legally) sell ddC and peptide. Woodroof's journey from a miserable waste of space to a more emphatic, complex and humane person is the core of the film.

It starts as down and out self-preservation and making money, but the more he struggles with his own problems the more it becomes clear the more he begins to empathize with those suffering from AIDS. On the journey with him is Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) who wants to help the patients legally but begins to question the FDA and hospital's motives, but Woodroof's interaction with her is limited. Instead there is focus on his relationship with Rayon, who is a drug addict and a prostitute. Played extremely well by Jared Leto (who really deserved every carat of Oscar gold) Rayon has very deep issues and is very consciously on a road to self-destruction. Woodroof, who is very homophobic at the start of the movie, slowly comes to see him not only as a business partner but as a friend.

The strong writing and bold performances anchor the movie but otherwise it is pretty straightforward. Point of fact it is the performances that make the movie stand out.  It was a bold move to make Woodroof such a dislikable person and even if he's more human by the end there are many times you can't help but be disgusted by his actions and self-serving.  Even

The movie manages to touch many issues like regulation favouring big companies, homophobia, and uncaring healthcare institutions but the central story is that of a man who manages to rebuild his life seemingly when it is at its end and who ends up better in the process.

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