What chills here isn't the reality of death, but the overwhelming atmosphere of ignorance and fear that leads even doctors to abandon their duty of care.Larry Kramer's passionate, polemical drama, set during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. In one particularly horrifying moment Bruce recounts the death of yet another boyfriend, whose corpse is unceremoniously put out with the trash after the coroner refuses to examine him, and Murphy's American Horror Story instincts lend the sequence an edge of the macabre. The dialogue is undeniably stagey, but it's also unsentimental and often brutal. From a modern perspective it's easy to agree, but in 1981 New York City when the act had only just been decriminalised, her suggestion that gay men stop having sex is understandably met with hostility. "If having sex can kill you, doesn't anyone with half a brain stop f**king?" Brookner snaps at one point.
Kramer packs layer upon layer of debate into his characters' struggle, and quietly emphasises just how cruelly timed the epidemic was for a community that had only just begun to see light at the end of the tunnel. Joe Mantello delivers one powerhouse monologue with an air of shattered desperation that works especially well in contrast to his co-stars' shouting, while Jim Parsons is a touching standout as the sensitive Tommy, who catalogues his friends' deaths by holding onto their Rolodex cards, creating "a collection of cardboard tombstones, bound together with a rubber band".
Ruffalo, Kitsch and Bomer all give spectacularly affecting performances, but just as many of the strongest moments come from the supporting cast. It's the grounded, tender character dynamics that come to life most powerfully, with Ned and Felix's endearingly understated romance laying the groundwork for a gut-wrenching third act. Having tried and failed to enlist help from the Mayor and from his high-powered brother Ben (Alfred Molina), he starts the grassroots organization Men's Health Crisis, providing information and help to victims who are literally being turned away from emergency wards.īut Ned's aggressive campaigning style leads to friction with the rest of the group and most significantly his deeply closeted best friend Bruce (Taylor Kitsch), whose boyfriend is one of the first to die. Ned, a lifelong loner experiencing love for the first time with journalist Felix Turner (Matt Bomer), is persuaded by Brookner to take action.
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