After watching Matthew McConaughey in True Detective as well as his short but memorable cameo appearance in The Wolf of Wall Street, it was utterly unthinkable not to watch this. McConaughey won the Best Actor Oscar for this film while Jared Leto won in the Best Supporting Actor category. If nothing else, we expected to be treated to some terrific performances.

We weren’t disappointed in that respect. McConaughey turns in a supremely captivating and even fun performance as a Dallas electrician and rodeo comboy who skirts the edge of the law. Leto is arguably even more impressive and unrecognisable as a transgender woman. I have to admit that I found myself enjoying the dynamic between the two, so much more interesting than the staid character played by Jennifer Garner, and loved how Woodroof moves by imperceptible degrees over the course of a film from a raging homophobe to someone who comes to see Rayon as one of his closest friends.

Unfortunately, it is harder to sing praises about the rest of the film. Let’s start with its historical inaccuracies with regards to the earliest days of finding a treatment for AIDS. The United States’ Food and Drug Administration is portrayed as the villain of the piece. In particular, the film accuses the FDA of pushing a toxic drug, AZT, onto patients while preventing access to other drugs that actually effective. The alleged motive is that the FDA has been bought by the unnamed pharmaceutical company which produces AZT. Even without any extra knowledge of the real historical context, this doesn’t make much sense: why is the FDA supposedly taking money from the company which makes the drug that no one wants instead of taking money from those companies which make the drugs that people do want? Why are the alternative drugs readily available in other countries but not in the US? Do they mean to say that the US government is just more corrupt than that of other countries? It is especially laughable how the The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, seems to be portrayed as a secret publication suppressed by the US government.

The facts are even more damning when you get into the nitty-gritty details. The truth is that the FDA was always aware of the many buyers club and deliberately turned a blind eye on them. It only turned on them when they started to distribute truly dangerous drugs like Compound Q which have been proven to kill people in clinical trials. The FDA targeted Woodroof’s club specifically because while the other clubs withdrew Compound Q, Woodroof refused to do so. Then there’s the fact that while it is true that AZT was prescribed at too high a dosage in the past, it is and continues to be an effective drug today, in combination with other drugs. At the same time, Peptide T, for which Woodroof is a proponent, has been proven to be ineffective and plays no part in modern treatments. Finally, there is no evidence of the FDA being in the pay of the makers of AZT, a very serious allegation.

As usual, I acknowledge that this is a work of fiction and artistic license is allowed. But a large part of the dramatic power of this film stems from its moral superiority. If that moral stance is not supported by actual facts, that completely takes the wind out of its sails. In fact, the film even seems to make the irresponsible claim that simple vitamins and mineral supplements alone work better than AZT. This is a direct sop to skeptics of scientific medicine and plays in favour such harmful beliefs as the anti-vaccination movement. It’s hard to cheer the side of a debate that is unequivocally wrong.

Then there is how the film treats its transgender character. As a cis male, I admit that I didn’t see anything wrong with the film and found it fairly progressive. The one sore point I had was when Woodroof casually points a gun at Rayon’s crotch and jokes about giving him the sex change operation he’d always wanted. But then I went and read some of the criticisms levelled against it by the transexual community and have to agree that they make pretty good points. I found it particularly illuminating in retrospect that while the actor Jared Leto correctly perceived the character as being a transexual and played her accordingly, the director seemed to see the character as a male in drag.

There’s no denying that this film features some fine performances and is well made, if unremarkable, in other respects. It may well be worth watching just for that. I also applaud it for taking on a chapter of history, the earliest days of the fight against AIDS, that few know much about. But at heart, it is still a deeply flawed film that actively pushes an agenda that I think is wrong. For that reason, I find it hard to recommend it.