So far the crowning achievement of Matthew McConaughey’s renaissance period and indeed of his entire career has to be his award-winning performance in Magic Mike. Once again it’s a supporting role, with Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer doing most of the featured work, but McConaughey’s character of Dallas has to be the most fascinating and electrifying part of the entire film. A former dancer and now owner of the club at which Tatum and Pettyfer’s characters are employed, Dallas essentially acts as an older version of the Mike character, having achieved the types of ambitions Mike currently has and proceeding to pursue even loftier ones beyond that. He can be goofy but also comes off as incredibly focused in his business plans.
It’s the type of role that’s hard to imagine being pulled off by anyone else. McConaughey as the host of the show controls the movie audience as keenly as he controls the audience we’re seeing in the club on the screen. He’s also an unorthodox mentor, explaining the psychology of dance to his protégé Pettyfer. The most striking moment for me comes when he’s simply shown in closeup watching his dancers: the look on his face is one of focus and expertise. McConaughey has said that it took him time to figure out the Dallas character, and he only really ‘got’ him once Steven Soderbergh told him that Dallas believes in extra-terrestrials. Somehow that made the entire person of Dallas click for him. And for some reason, even though it’s never alluded to at all in the movie, after watching, it makes perfect sense to me, too.
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