Studio: 20th Century Fox, Tree/Line Films, Catfish Films

Rating: 3/5

Synopsis

I suppose I should give Walk the Line a four rating. But although I recognize it’s very well done it still wasn’t amazingly interesting. This film is about the early life of Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix), concentrating from when he started his music career to when he finally married June Carter (Reese Witherspoon).

We first start out with about 10 minutes of early childhood. We meet his brother Jack and then Jack dies in an accident. John’s father, Ray (Robert Patrick), is an alcoholic, abusive, and blames John for Jack’s death. All in all a not happy childhood.

So he joins the Air Force and is stationed in Germany. This scene is just long enough for us to meet Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin) whom John marries when his tour is up and they have two or three kids. We also get to see John writing a song while in the Air Force.

John gets back and settles down. He’s a door to door salesman and is really quite bad at it. And he dreams of making music. Eventually he gets up the nerve to confront Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts) who listens to John’s. Sam is initially unimpressed when John tries to sing gospel, like every other singer on the radio. It’s when John breaks out his original songs that Sam is finally impressed enough to sign him to a record contract.

Johnny Cash’s life starts accelerating from there. He goes on tour with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne) and Elvis Pressley (Tyler Hilton) though at the time they’re all up and comers. Also on the tour is the lovely June Carter and John becomes infatuated with her.

Life on the road is 24x7 and John gets into drugs, which was not seen as being quite as dangerous back then – the time frame is that 1950’s and 60’s. John practically leads a double life, one on the road and one at home. And living up to both lives slowly tears him apart.

Eventually, because of his obsession with June, Vivian leaves John. But after a couple of failed marriages June doesn’t want John, especially with his drug problem. So it gets a bit worse until June’s mom and dad, Ezra (Dan Beene) and Maybelle (Sandra Ellis Lafferty) step in and help June clean up Johnny.

After that it’s slow going back to the road of respectability, starting with the famous concert at Folsom Prison. And finally June says yes and that’s pretty much the end of the movie.

Review

Great performances from Phoenix and Witherspoon. Nice singing too. Not knowing Cash’s life the movie didn’t make that much an impression on me. The director’s commentary helps by explaining some of the storytelling subtleties.

At a basic level I wasn’t really interested in the subject and the movie didn’t grab me. Mom and dad watched the whole DVD which is a bit rare for them so it must have appealed to them. Personally I wouldn’t recommend this movie.

Extras

Commentary with Director and Co-Writer James Mangold. Quite a good commentary. Mangold talks well and explains certain things. He also had access to Johnny and June when he was developing the movie so he points out things that they said that aren’t in their autobiographies.

Deleted Scenes: 10 scenes or parts of scenes with optional director’s commentary. Mangold gives good reasons why each scene was cut out. And at just over 2 hours for the theatrical release I don’t blame him.

Theatrical Trailer.