Walk the Line

Let me see, here. Guy with natural musical talent and a browbeating father/uncle/patriarchal figure pursues a burgeoning musical career, suddenly gets famous but does a bunch of drugs/alcohol and hits a low point, loses his wife and all his money, and then has a lifelong friend/mother/dreamgirl say something wise and inspiring that enables him to beat his addiction and revive his career. Sound familiar? Ok, ok, so even though Walk the Line has the same recurring elements of almost every other biographical movie ever made, Johnny Cash’s story is still quite absorbing. When combined with the superb acting and vocal performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, this movie-going experience was more than worth the $10 admission.

The movie opens with Johnny Cash’s (Joaquin Phoenix) epic performance at the Folsom County jail, wherein he is distracted with a circular saw just before he is due on stage. The film then flashes back to Cash’s childhood, where we see his verbally abusive father discourage Cash from listening to music and then berate him when his older brother, Jack, is mortally wounded in a circular saw accident. His father clearly favors Jack over Johnny, and is extremely displeased that “the wrong son is taken” from him. We then skip forward several years to see Johnny composing his first songs while stationed in Germany during the Korean War, and then we watch his failed efforts at selling home appliances door to door in Memphis, Tennessee. When he and his two band mates audition before Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts) of Sun Records with a half-hearted gospel song, Phillips bluntly tells Johnny that he can’t market gospel music, especially when there was little feeling behind Cash’s attempt. At this point we hear the speech from the oft-played preview about lying in the gutter dying, and having time to sing just one song. This is apparently the precise motivational speech Johnny needed to hear in order to instantly transform from crappy to awe-inspiring. He soon finds himself on tour with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), with whom he has an instant attraction that will tempt him to stray throughout the rest of the tour and well into his career.

While the movie is framed with Johnny Cash’s career, with a large portion of running time devoted to concerts, the story really seems to be about his relationship with June Carter, who continually rebuffs his advances and marriage proposals for over a decade. I suppose this factor might make this movie equally attractive to men and women, as it’s a love story mixed in with the chronology of Johnny Cash’s musical career. I can’t say enough how awesome Joaquin Phoenix was in his ability to sound like Johnny Cash, and despite sounding like a screech monkey for the first ten minutes, Reese Witherspoon did an excellent job with her vocal performances as well.

I definitely recommend Walk the Line—the story is intriguing, the acting is excellent, and the singing is sensational. I really can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like this movie, so I give it four very entertaining stars.