Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.
★★★
Physical transformation is the name of the game for this true-story drama. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a lot of weight to play men ravaged by AIDS, and on top of that, they do great acting jobs.
McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a straight rodeo cowboy/electrician who finds out in 1985 that he has AIDS. Not much was known about AIDS then. It was a scary gay disease that Rock Hudson had. Woodroof refuses to accept the apparent death sentence and fights tooth and nail to find any possible cure.
For dramatic purposes, the movie changes the history to make the FDA look less cooperative than they were, and they make the drugs Woodroof used seem more effective than they were. You'd think Woodroof personally cured AIDS. But on its own, as a movie, it's very effective at what it's trying to do.
McConaughey has come a long way from his Kate Hudson rom-coms (or even from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past which co-starred Garner), and this might be his best work to date.
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