This central truth to the character really works to rob the film of sentimentality of him and therefore of the wider situation and it makes for a better film because we are engaged because we are interested rather than becomes a sweeping musical score or "Oscar clip" moment tells us to feel something. As a result his efforts to bring in the drugs are not done out of some selfless act of wanting to help others as he prepares to meet his maker, but rather as part of his own fight for life he hits on a scheme to make money – and for the majority of the film this is the case.
The character of Ron is a hustler first and everything else second and this doesn't change once he finally gets through the "bargaining, anger, denial, acceptance" stages of his diagnosis. Happily the truth is that, although there is an element of this, the film doesn't overplay to this side of its nature and instead delivers a remarkable straight telling without too much excess. With this very basic grasp I did worry that the film would be sentimental, making a hero of the main character, playing up the plight of the infected and generally being the sort of film they wheel out for awards at this time of year, ticking all the topics off that gets voters onboard. Indeed I had ignored it as much as I could and to the point where I really knew the barebones of the plot – which was to say it was a true story of a guy who got HIV and, frustrated by the lack of medical treatment at the time, decided to start running effective drugs unapproved by the FDA across the Mexican border into the US. This film came to the UK with the usual awards hype that seems to accompany any number of bigger films that are released around this time, but I had made an effort to avoid it and didn't know too much about it other than McConaughey being talked up about his performance.
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