“I'm dying, and you want me to get a hug from a bunch of faggots?!” Ron Woodroof was a bigoted, homophobic, booze-swilling, drug taking, womanising, rodeo-loving, red-neck Texan hick. In 1985, his doctor told him he had full blown HIV/AIDS and gave him 30 days to live. As friends quickly fell away, his response was more drink, more coke, more women and to lay his hands on as much AZT, the only legal drug available in the US at the time, as he could. It nearly killed him.

Beyond any physical commitment (McConaughey lost a phenomenal amount of weight for the role), he embodies Woodroof with a mesmerising performance that arrives on the back of a line of similarly gritty, compelling turns. Dallas Buyers Club along with Mud and The Paperboy confirm that he is one of the finest actors working. It also cements Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée's status as a director of note, coming as it does on the back of equally challenging and enthralling films like Cafe De Flore and C.R.A.Z.Y.

Yet Dallas Buyers Club's towering strength is found in the way McConaughey relieves this unpleasant character of any sentimentality; change is slow, gradual, realistic, and his hard-boiled, red-neck interior remains close to the surface. It's a masterclass in dramatic acting given terrific support. Jared Leto (Requiem For A Dream / Alexander) is painfully tragic as Rayon, Woodroof's transgendered business partner who brings focus and purpose to his life, if not her own. While fear grips the screenplay, it courses through Rayon with heart-thumping inevitability.

Their buyer's club gave people with HIV access to imported drugs, vitamins and protein inhibitors through a legal loophole. But in bypassing AZT, Woodruff enraged the FDA and DEA who were determined to shut him down. This incredible film charts one man's determination to stay alive despite astounding odds and, most tantalisingly, supporting the very people he despised. Profit motivation helped. What is most remarkable about the Dallas Buyers Club is the way it earns its emotional response. There are no cheap shots, no epiphanies, no messianic breakthroughs and just a single hug, a nervous one at that. “Once you get HIV you're married to it!” said Woodroof, a pragmatism that governed life in the face of death.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Sony Theatrette, Sydney on 7 November 2013