Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar (2014)

Ground Control to Chris and Jon

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” 

― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

Matthew McConaughey is a bore to watch. There, I said it. Unfortunately he is the star of “Interstellar”, Christopher Nolan’s latest sci-fi film. McConaughey's performance in “Dallas Buyers Club” was a tour de force but “True Detectives” showed the limits of his force. He has a propensity to ham it up if left unsupervised - see “Wolf of Wall Street”. Nolan gave McConaughey free reign to drift when the actor needed to be fastened to his command chair. Someone might have tapped the director on the shoulder and noted that John Lithgow, a seasoned master of stage and screen, was on the set. Lithgow plays a grumpy old man with nothing to do except yell at his grandkids. He did an amazing job but there are only so many ways to bark at children. Michael Caine, another screen legend, phoned-in his part as the chief Scientist. The other cast members were saddled with roles that failed to test their mettle, maybe they could have assisted Lithgow with the kids. It is a crime that all these talented people were put under the yoke of Nolan and hundreds of millions in studio money. They needed direction, not expensive props. They were crushed by an army of accountants and technicians adrift without a leader. Even Matt Damon, who has exhibited discretion in his choice of material, fell victim. Two hours into battle Matt rises out of a deep induced coma. He has openly expressed regret for rejecting a part in the sci-fi mega-blockbuster “Avatar” which explains his unfortunate decision to participate in this holiday turkey. Damon throws a few punches and then blows up, literally. His character’s fury is rooted in having lied in order to secure an undeserved rescue. The off screen Damon might be equally peeved for different reasons.

Nolan’s films prove the ‘The Peter Principle’. This is business management jargon for the idea that managers rise to the level of their incompetence.  Promotions based on past work are no harbinger of future success as the new job requires a new toolkit. This writer/director started with an innovative independent film, “Memento”, based on a leading character with no ability to retain long-term memory. It was followed “Insomnia” where a California detective is forced to solve a case in the endless sunlight of an Alaskan summer. It was a main-stream commercial feature with big name stars and pushed the boundaries of a detective story, think “Crime and Punishment” rather than Dick Tracey. The serial killer was played against type by Robin Williams. Ironically during the dissection of this actor's suicide the stress of working in constant daylight took a serious emotional toll on the erstwhile comic, leading to a relapse and a stint in rehab. It had the opposite effect on Mr. Nolan’s career leading to his taking the reigns of the Batman franchise and his own high budget science fiction film “Inception”. These endeavors showed strong box office which led to Nolan being given the opportunity to direct another of his ideas, which he penned with his brother Jonathan (who wrote “Memento”). “Interstellar” is a complicated apocalyptic tale with elements of time travel and space exploration. Commercially speaking the Nolans’ projects have shown a general upward trend in gross receipts. They have been given more resources and delivered solid returns. Artistically speaking, however, things ended with “Batman Begins”. In viewing “Interstellar” one wonders whether Robin Williams wasn’t the only victim of “Insomnia”. Plumbing the minds of brain damaged loners and guilt wracked detectives does not prepare one to paint portraits of established super-heroes or create other worlds. The Nolan brothers are better suited to a narrower canvass. Unfortunately “Interstellar” is a grand showcase of glitzy lazy amateurism born of being overwhelmed.

It’s difficult to give scope to the epic horribleness of this film. Usually the craft-related departments come through in these blockbusters. Not in this case. Even the makeup was bad. McConaughey, who plays a NASA pilot/corn farmer, had an unearthly copper hue. This dove-tailed with the flatness of the special effects, astounding for a modern day sci-fi feature. What was particularly disturbing was the blatant  borrowing from Kubrick’s “2001”. Imitation of a classic is derigueur… but a half baked, half assed re-staging? Norton's “astronaut falling into the time abyss” is even more embarrassing when one considers the original was made over 46 years ago, decades before wide-scale deployment of computer graphics in motion pictures. Nolan’s visual impairment is matched by his aural deficits. The sound mix lost all sense of proportion. Key moments of dialogue were drowned out by tinnitus inducing swells of music or special effects. Not that hearing the words really mattered. Nolan has the knack of repeating things in droning soliloquies. If you miss it the first time due to a timpani drum or a tidal wave, you will have four or five more opportunities to digest the narrative. As we drift through Nolan’s universe with this crew of tired cartoon characters, we yearn for yesteryear’s stark simplicity. Nearly half a Century ago HAL was terrorizing his astronauts with simple curt sentences as they breathed and breathed and breathed. This combined with the Strauss waltzes defined the rhythms of space. Instead we are subjected to the tedious dialogue on obscure science or non-sensical plot points. Nolan’s script is designed for obsessive test takers who are interested in passing a quiz on the plot, rather than an audience focused on experiencing the texture of other worlds. There is a madness to the grand reveals in this film. Are we supposed to believe that this passionate NASA employee is completely unaware of a major NASA installation with a few hours drive in this underpopulated world? Are we to believe that the people in charge of this super massive installation are unaware that the leading NASA pilot is just down the road? Are we to believe that the NASA chiefs would suddenly hire this pilot who happens upon the facility due to his 10 year old daughter's receiving messages in morse code from another dimension? Yes, yes yes…..  Which begs the exclamation, WTF!? It goes on and on…. for 2 hours and 49 minutes. This audience member was praying that another encounter with a black hole would speed the clock… alas unlike the Lazarus project heroes stranded on those distant planets, there was no hibernation chamber to shield us from the desolate monotony.

Even the most insipid late night television spot can lay bare insights into the society at large. This holiday blockbuster offers a strange asymmetrical message regarding scientific progress. “Interstellar’s” earth has suffered an unspecified ecological disaster leading to the degradation of farmland and a one generation end-time. There are vague references to greedy selfishness being at the heart of the debacle. Everyone wanting too much which might hint at a call to collectivism. Strangely McConaughey seems to exhibit an abhorrence to the idea that the government, or anyone, can tell him anything. The apocalypse has had no dent in our hero’s solid American individualism. Oddly the this end-time earth bears little resemblance to the standard “Mad Max” set-piece. It is a subdued shabby rural setting. Imagine a crappy small town in the Mid West or upstate NY that is visited by a dust storm every fortnight. It’s drab, but people are well fed. There is a muddled sense of order more Mayberry than dystopia. The government has the same listless quality. There is an odd sequence where the local school teaches McConaughey’s daughter that his beloved Apollo missions never made it to the moon. This propaganda is designed to keep the young people interested in farming rather than technology. This makes little sense as McConaughey’s farm is swimming in high tech automation. Logic would dictate a Federal push against publicizing space exploration achievements would have no bearing on agriculture as a career. Unfortunately we are in the Nolan’s strange universe. This particular storyline makes Pol Pot’s campaign to promote smoking seem downright comprehensible. “Interstellar”, despite the reams of expository dialogue, is riddled with inexplicable reasons for the characters’ motivations. Probably the central incredulous plot point lies in Caine lying to McConaughey about the prospects for earth. We are supposed to believe this former NASA pilot, who loathes his current farm work and obsessively collects space trinkets, would refuse to lead an intergalactic mission to save mankind. All because of his young daughter. I guess the Nolan’s missed the news story about Mars One, the current ONE WAY mission to form human colonies on Mars. Here is a quote from the NY Times article: “More than 200,000 people from dozens of countries applied”. No doubt there are hundreds of parents amongst the throngs willing to abandon their families to serve some outlandish fantasy of “progress”. McConaughey himself is an odd proselytizer about Science’s place in man’s future. He rails against the lying PC police who deride NASA. At the close of the film he has a change of heart. He sits in the old farmhouse replete with a small little league field outside. It is now located in a huge space station orbiting Saturn. He senses something is wrong and embarks for the wormhole to get to his sweetheart. Her partner has conveniently died. His sweetie sits in her brave new world. The odd thing is it bears a remarkable resemblance to the desolate earth everyone is abandoning. One again, WTF? One keeps on thinking - why didn’t everyone just stay on earth and try to solve those problems? This sort of question is never really addressed in the film. Earth IS finished. Period. All the wizardry that assures a successful space mission never applies to the mother planet. Underneath the copper skin of McConaughey’s “down to earth” hero is a pernicious technological escapism. This badly executed, poorly thought-out, feature is really a paean to mankind’s technical prowess. Our answers lie in our abilities to innovate. We can always build tunnels to escape out mistakes.

The Nolans have proved themselves clever with their early work. This film is dumb which is highlighted by it’s attempts at being smart. There is a constant refrain from Michael Caine of Dylan Thomas’ wonderful poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight”. The force of this work lies in KNOWING the fight will inevitably END IN DEATH. The valiance is born in being DOOMED. So why is this poetry triumphantly repeated by the lead scientist charged with manning earth’s salvation? Well the clever Nolan brothers might say that Caine knew the earth would fail. Correct. Except that he had a strong faith in his mission’s success exhibited by the fact that he felt guilty about not having a majority of earthlings join in his careful PLAN B. Thomas’ words sound good, especially when rounded by Caine’s rough English accent. Unfortunately they make about as much sense as the rest of this draw-out mess of a film. It is inconceivable that people who would carefully plot the logical progress in “Memento” would make the amateurish mistakes which permeate every aspect of “Interstellar”. How could this happen? It is preferable, from an artistic POV, to believe the Nolan brothers are simply in it for the money. Sadly it seems this nearly three hour waste of time is rooted in a genuine effort to produce good work. It would be economically more rewarding to produce a shorter film. There is also an excess of heartfelt nonsense that simple con men would eschew. No, the fraternal duo are being blinded by misguided accolades and the Sirens’ call of huge budgets in order to spare no expense for their “vision”. Audiences everywhere can hope that their inner circle possesses an honest friend who can advocate for spare modesty in their next endeavor.  How about a ninety minute film of a father caught between the pull of duty and his tween daughter? Unfortunately one sense future movie-goers are in store for more of the Nolans' magic. The brothers might want to ponder the lyrics of a current indie calypso band: “Don’t need no message from outer space, to see what’s goin’ on in front me face” *.  And maybe someone could send them a copy of “The Peter Principle”. 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

"I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men" - Isaac Newton, commenting on the 18th century ‘South Sea Bubble’ financial disaster. Later revealed he had invested and lost money.


Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” brought to mind some dialogue from a 1954 film noir movie:

Criminal: Now you listen to me cop I pay your salary.
Sgt. Friday: Alright sit down. I’m gonna earn it.
Criminal: You already have... the kinda money you make... what do they pay you to carry that badge around? 40 cents an hour?
Sgt. Friday: (quiet rage) You sit down!
The criminal sits.
Sgt. Friday: (sternly) That badge pays $464 a month. That’s what the job’s worth. I knew it when I hired on. $67.40 comes out for withholding. I give $27.84 for pension and $12 bucks for widows and orphans. That leaves me $356.76. That badge is worth $1.82 an hour. So mister you just settle back in that chair cause I’m gonna blow about 20 bucks of it right now.

This snippet from the decades old, forgettable, 88 minute “Dragnet” movie, has more heart than the three hours of Scorsese bacchanal. These two films might seem unrelated as they are different genres made in different eras. Actually they are both comic book examinations of professions; the former police work, the latter banking. The 1950s sketch of life in the LAPD is well crafted and gives a fun simulacrum of detective work. Scorsese's film is a badly executed hollow portrait of awful person which bares little resemblance to the financial services industry.  The success of the kitsch police thriller is simple. Sgt. Friday is entertaining. His pithy no-nonsense staccato verbal quips ooze the righteousness of someone who fails to be ruled by the dollar. Jordan Belfort, the central protagonist of “The Wolf of Wall Street, is a dreary money grabber who secretes a potent mixture of self-pity and arrogance. Note to Scorsese: good cartoon characters are good; bad cartoon characters are good; but pathetic cartoon characters are pathetic.

All hope that the director was going to create a realistic commentary on our current financial system evaporated in the first moments of Belfort’s appearance on Wall Street.  His boss takes the novice employee, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, to lunch at a high end restaurant on top of the World Trade Center on his first day on the job. (Full disclosure: I worked on Wall Street and was familiar with his boss).  I find this account of events to be unbelievable; but not as outlandish as what follows. This meal supposedly included bouts of cocaine sniffing and lengthy advice on masterbation, virility and ‘how to fleece clients’. Matthew McConaughey’s performance as the boss might have been recreated by any number of eighth grade drama students who were given the following instructions: DRUG ADDICT /WALL STREET MONEY GUY. At this point Belfort is an earnest teetotaler as the evil demons have yet to work their black magic.  This magic seems to have affected all the patrons of the restaurant because they fail to react as McConaughey leads Dicaprio in a chest pounding incantation that includes making gorilla snorts. Guess the crowd was used to it as McConaughey is a regular lunch customer. The only time I personally knew brokers to take long lunches was either to attend financial presentations or entertain clients; neither of which were daily occurrences. The essence of being a broker, especially in the days before cell phones, is to be chained to your desk while the market is open in order to facilitate customer orders. This garish caricature of Wall Street continues after our hero is laid off following the 1987 crash. His new gig was located in a low end strip mall on Long Island.  This ‘first day’ is even more implausible than his previous debut.  He picks up his phone for his very first sales call to at complete stranger and lands an enormous order. His co-workers fall silent. One of them exclaims: “How did you do that?!!!“ Maybe “so that’s why they call you Superman!” would have been more appropriate.

The most offensive dimension of these scenes is the portrayal of Belfort as a Horatio Alger-like innocent being led astray by the evil Wall Streeters. His post-crash job transition is portrayed as a natural step for someone who had secured a brokerage license and needed to continue to work in financial services.  There is a scene where he considers bringing his talent to another industry but his wife convinces him that Wall Street is where he belongs. To be clear: a decision to transition from a ‘legitimate’ brokerage apprenticeship to working in a penny stock ‘boiler room’ is the equivalent of a mainstream actor deciding to abandon broadway for pornography. Such an individual would probably know the difference between the two worlds and understand that joining one severely limits one’s chances of rejoining the other.  It is doubtful that the ‘real’ Belfort explained this to his doting wife who might have seen his penny stock career in a different light.

The film is based on Belfort’s story as portrayed in his best selling autobiography “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street”. Scorsese is impervious to any notion that the master con man is being disingenuous. Perhaps the fact that this was written while our hero was behind bars for fraud, amongst other felonies, might have given the director pause. It’s difficult to divine the Scorsese vision for this film. Current news is a grist-mill for dramatic material about Wall Street. The morning after seeing the film the following headline was in the New York Times: “Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward” - about professors hiding pro-business funding for their pro-business research. Incidentally the week before it was revealed that Warren Buffett made $25,000 a minute in 2013. Incidentally the academics yearlong toil, worth maybe four minutes of Mr. Buffett’s time, is paid via a salary rather than from investment returns. This means the teachers, and other working people, pay double the income tax rate as billionaires such as Buffett.  Despite the myriad of outrageous inequities, Mr. Scorsese feels a circus film about an unsympathetic clown is an intelligent way to showcase the shortcomings of Wall Street.

The director requires three hours to tell Belfort’s ponderous story. Early on we are treated to our hero snorting cocaine from the anus of a call girl before greeting his first wife who is patiently waiting at home. Much of the remaining two and a half hours oscillates between variations on the anus snort and passionate sales pitches. Once again kudos to Leonardo as his adrenaline filled rants, whether he was pushing stocks, downing whisky, hitting his wife.... were altogether convincing. A full third of this film is made up of the sales monologues.  The best salesman I ever knew was the fuller brush man who visited our house every month when I was a child. He sold various soaps and brushes. Dramatically speaking he would have been a more interesting subject which, in turn, should give a strong indication as to the weakness of the theatrical backbone of this movie. As a twelve year old the drug and sex orgies might have had some appeal. As a middle aged movie goer these carnal flashes have the sustaining power of fiery car crashes or exploding buildings. Despite being saddled with playing this absurd character, Leonardo manages to deliver moments of brilliance. There is a scene in the lobby of a waspy country club where he summons the seemingly lost art of physical slapstick comedy. He mimicks the effects on the human body after downing a handful of quaaludes. One felt transported back to the golden era of silent films where body movement was paramount. Scorsese himself, despite his fateful decision to bring this film to life, has some interesting moments. Noone outdoes this director in capturing the swagger of outcast, underclass New York dudes; think of the men featured in “Mean Streets” and “Goodfellas”. They are repulsive losers and yet there is a strange dignity that keeps the audience glued to every donut chomp and insipid comment. In addition he expanded his brilliant voice over exposition, which often includes a freeze frames, to include Belfort actually speaking directly to the audience. (A nod to ‘House of Cards’?)  The supporting cast managed to outshine the big name stars.  Every fat roll of Jonah Hill exudes a feckless perversion that leads the audiences to wonder what will come out when he reaches for his pockets: a crackpipe? a pen? his penis? Margot Robbie shines as the second wife. Her blond locks boldly proclaiming, this has nothing to do with Farah Fawcett - it’s a classy hairdo. The ‘Lawng Iwland’ accent was pitch perfect evoking the brassy sparkle of McMansions whose interiors evoke Versailles via Ralph Lauren. Another highpoint amidst the drawn-out sex and screaming is the taciturn FBI man Kyle Chandler.  He brings a steely calm to all the endless visual indigestion.  Unfortunately Scorsese ends the film with a odd but revealing sequence. The hero G-man, who flaunts his proud working man credentials, seems overcome with the dinginess of his subway commute. Meanwhile our hero is out of prison and racking up money with his newest venture “Straight Line Persuasion System”, a course on training salesmen. Chandler’s melancholy is rooted in the injustice of life. The director seems to forget that our FBI man is an exalted untouchable in a world of mammon.

Having the G-man feel his life’s work unrewarding compared to Belfort’s material riches shows the intellectual dishonesty of the story. Scorsese has always had a dark vision - probably best illustrated in his cameo as the misogynistic passenger in Taxi Driver who verbally fantasizes about butchering his wife. “The Wolf of Wall Street” shows that he’s finally crossed Kurtz’s line of sanity. What is the audience to make of the endless minuscule documentation of Belfort’s debauchery?; or the never-ending sequences of frenzied speeches to the duped customers/employees? Belfort is the master persuader and perhaps his most prized victim is Scorsese himself. The master salesman fooled the master film director into giving him a starring role. The truth is that the lead protagonist is merely a grotesque worth documenting in a footnote about fringe excess. The real villains are the operators who successfully integrate themselves into polite society. People such as Ken Starr the notorious Ponzi schemer who targeted celebrity clients; including MARTIN SCORSESE. Such figures are nowhere to be found in “The Wolf of Wall Street”. It is hard to know how much Scorsese personally lost in his dealings with Starr but it is interesting that he would decide to focus his artistic gaze on Jordan Belfort. Unfortunately  the choice is rooted in the “madness” of anger. It is easy to understand the rage of being taken by a slick suited Wall Street con man. It is also understandable that discussing the fact that real wages haven’t risen in the US since the 1970s might not appear as dramatic red meat. Ironically the fury of our current political divide rests in the bedrock of this income inequality. Scorsese overwrought need to definitively nail this towering bad guy is a personal revenge statement rather than a universal story. “The Wolf of Wall Street” fails to give answers to the raging crowds of Tea Partiers or 99 percenters. The lack real insight into our current centralization of wealth makes this film a private artist statement that has little resonance. Mr. Scorsese self righteously points the finger at this monster while the far more pernicious attitudes are unchallenged. Four years on from the 2008 financial crisis there have been no substantive reforms to address the concentration of wealth and power in our financial institutions.  To quote former labor secretary Robert Reich repeating Justice Brandeis: “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”  A vast majority of people are feeling immobility rooted in economic stagnation while a select few enjoy exponential financial success. Jordan Belfort is a ridiculous sideshow. A charismatic hustler who happened to land in the financial sector rather than health care (Richard M. Scrushy, HealthSouth Corp), energy production (Jeffrey Skilling, Enron) or media (Robert Maxwell, Mirror Group).  Their stories might hint at institutional trouble, but it always becomes about the specific brand of sociopathology. In short, good businessmen are alike; crooked businessmen are crooked in their own fashion. Conflating the individual with the vast behemoth of the industry might lead to the wrong conclusions about a remedy. Wall Street’s problems are not rooted in hookers and quaaludes.

The post movie Belfort is currently hawking his “Straight Line Persuasion System”. This training advice kit for salesman has a website (http://usa.jordanbelfort.com/) which asks the question: Can You Really Use The Wolf of Wall Street’s Sales Tactics to Ethically Persuade People And Make Money? (His emphasis) He is also shopping a reality TV show featuring himself. Belfort makes me crave the comic book villains of yesteryear who were less pathologically tiresome. Creeps who didn’t turn their depraved egocentric criminality into another business. As Scorsese shows these people can get under your skin and into your head. Even the FBI man wondered if he wasn’t stupid for simply cashing in and not worrying. If they can get to Chandler and Scorsese... are we all next? Where have you gone Joe Friday, our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you. Perhaps Jack Webb could be hologrammed into this years coming Oscar ceremony. He could approach the microphone in a simple. ill-fitting, off-the-rack tuxedo. “Thank you members of the Academy. I wasn’t the most famous actor or the best paid... but I wouldn’t trade places with a movie mogul or a superstar. I tried to do my job well. I got paid fairly. I looked out for the other guy... it might seem corny but.... (pause, clears his throat)  And this years Oscar for missing an important opportunity: Martin Scorsese, director, “The Wolf of Wall Street”.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

There Will Be Drugs


“Dallas Buyers Club” is a buddy film with explosive political undertones exploring class, sexuality and the pernicious overreach of government.  The central protagonist is a roughneck homophobic bigot who pairs up with a gay transvestite male prostitute.  The movie is set during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic where there were no effective treatments for the disease. Their mission is to discover a remedy that will keep them alive. This dynamic duo decide to take on the FDA, the DEA, the IRS and the established medical establishment. Goliath wins a pyrrhic victory as the two David’s are vindicated by history. Strangely the film left a uncomfortable emptiness towards the central character, played by Matthew McCounaughey. The filmmakers shaped a tale of amoral outcasts transforming into solid ‘do-gooders’ in the face of pure evil.  In the end the cartoonish characterization of the ‘enemy’ undercut the ‘goodness’ of the protagonists. The film, despite some outstanding qualities, fails to evoke the pathos appropriate for this material. We are left with a long-winded ‘wild story’; instead of a heartfelt examination of our recent past.

McCounaughey and Jared Leto deliver standout performances which are worth the price of admission. McConaughey embodies the uniquely American rage of someone whose property has be violated. One can smell the body odor as he bunches his fingers into a fist or reaches for a gun or a bottle of discount liquor. He has been invaded by a foreign virus. His friends turn against him and label him queer - akin to being a leper/pedophile in the setting of a Southern 1980s trailer park. Those white coated professionals at the hospital are marginally more helpful... but he’s not taking a death sentence lying down. They give him 30 days... he gives them the finger. Eventually he metaphorically partners with Leto whose charm overcomes McCounaughey’s visceral hatred. Leto enables McCounaughey to trade his fists for lawyers and his clunker for a Cadillac. McCounaughey becomes a genuine jet-setter and spans the globe in search of drugs to hawk in his home-grown AIDS clinic; which is run from a seedy motel.  This is all based on a actual story and it illustrates the fierce power of the American entrepreneurial spirit.  An alcoholic, sex-addict oil-rig electrician with little formal education and even less grace manages to become a quasi-legal international health clinic operator for disenfranchised male homosexuals.  The grim reaper’s blade gives us all focus. In McConaughey’s case it becomes the equivalent of Popeye’s spinach.  Our anti-hero is ‘loaded for bear’. All the private drug companies, white collar professionals and government regulators should take cover.

Prior to his contracting HIV McCounaughey’s life revolves around hookers, gambling and alcohol.  The writer/director spend an immense amount of screen time chronicling his debauchery. There is an unconvincing moment at his job where McCounaughey calls an ambulance for a immigrant worker who is caught in the mesh gears of the oil rig equipment. His co-workers are too scared being fired for exposing illegal workers on the jobsite. McCounaughey’s burst of humanity is a contrived way of convincing the audience that everything they’ve experienced up to this point merely masks someone who is concerned with social justice. This hidden ‘good guy’ rears his head again after being ostracized by his friends. There is an encounter in a super-market with one of his former wing men. McCounaughey physically forces the ex-buddy to make nice with Leto; the new transvestite side-kick. Once again these acts of goodness contrast with the hardscrabble survivor turned entrepreneur. It’s ironic that a brilliant performance would be disingenuous. Unfortunately McConaughey’s wonderful rendering of the character is saddle with a director and writer who can never fully embrace the man.  Leto’s struggles are real. He is a drug addict shamed by his family. His encounter with his respectable bank-manager father is one of the few genuine emotional notes in the film. Leto steals the movie because his character is built on struggle rather than set-piece scenes that evoke emotions that are absent in the actual protagonist. The writer/director wasted McConaughey’s talent with gratuitous, outlandish strutting; rather than a heartfelt portrayal of a disenfranchised, under-class survivor.

The filmmakers believed the outrageousness of McConaughey’s rise was the hook for the story. The opposite is true. The most fascinating aspect of his journey is his focus and ability to adopt lifestyles and allies. All his vices are exchanged for a healthy lifestyle, copious research in medical journals and an alliance with white collar businessmen of various sexual orientations. The film should have exhibited less whoring for more practice in adopting his new persona.  In coming back from Mexico after his conversion he dresses as a priest. This hints at strategizing that was never exhibited in the script. This absence also haunts his oversees journeys. How did he figure out how to get around Japanese drug export regulations?  When did he suddenly realize lawyers were preferable to bail bondsmen? The journey is bogged down in hollow encounters with one-dimensional bad guys. The portrayal of the medical community and drug companies was flat.  It might be accurate to say that the makers of AZT put profit over people’s lives. Dramatically it is more interesting to draw an equivalence between McCounaughey and the drug companies. What about HIS actions. Given his track record it seems reasonable to assume he was struggling to save his life and make money rather than being just.  The film devolves into a simplistic story of good guys with noble intentions vs. bad guys who only care about money and power. Fronting the characters who wear black hats are the two the doctors McCounaughey encounters in the hospital. The love interest, who ends up with a white hat, is uninteresting and the leading doctor is leaden.  The sundry bureaucrats were also cartoonish. The end result  is a series of forgettable stand-offs where McConaughey’s is defiant and unrealistic. Believability would have fueled empathy and a sense of discomfort about our real world heroes and villains. In the end we are left with a movie ending coupled with a movie hero.  The audience is left in the small world of the big screen. This story should have provoked thoughts about our contemporary American landscape where the rising entrepreneurs class meshes with entrenched powerful government and private sector interests.  This film might have shed light on the ambiguousness of being successful.  Had McCounaughey prevailed - would he have been a hero? or something else.


In “The Kings Speech” an unorthodox outsider produces an effective treatment for speech pathology while being shunned by the polite society of the medical establishment.  Ironically this drama seems to be the base template for “The Dallas Buyers Club”. The filmmakers might have sought inspiration from “There Will Be Blood”, a harrowing drama about an oil field entrepreneur who rises to the top. This is a story about a man who will “drink your milkshake” rather than cure your illness. Flannery O’Connor exhibits a keen insight into the motivation for these types of anti-heroes. The killer in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”  muses over the body of a grandmother he has just executed: ““She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” Unfortunately the writer and director lack O’Connor’s knowledge of hardscrabble Southern life and American entrepreneurs. They mistake McCounaughey for being good. He is hideously determined American individualist with a gun to his head.  Never underestimate their ability to conquer. They’re very productive people. They do great things.... but they also want your milkshake. Dramatically speaking, this is fertile ground.... but not when you pretend that doctors on TV are real doctors.  Noone wants to buy snake oil.... but everyone loves watching a snake oil salesman.