Anyway, here are my thoughts on the movie, with a little background.
As noted earlier in the thread, musically, I think there is no one who tops Johnny Cash. If you consider the test of an artist to be longevity (a nearly 50 year career), the consistency of his output during that time, and his influence on other artists, then arguably Cash is the greatest singer-songwriter of the 20th Century.
My own experience as a Cash fan began young. The first cassette my family owned, circa 1970, was a Johnny Cash collection. My father played that cassette every day before work for about four months.
But even before that, I was watching Johnny Cash in the late 60s, on his TV show. June Carter was his costar. Even at the age of four, I knew there was something cool about that tall man with deep voice, dressed in black, who would start his show by spinning around with a guitar and saying "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."
So, in terms of being a picky fanboy, when it comes to Cash, I'm one. If this film had given me a reason to bitch and moan that they "ruined" Johnny Cash, I'd take it.
Fortunately, I don't have to. It's a very good film.
Admittedly, "Walk the Line" takes the basis "rock and roll biography" plot through the same paces as most other films of this type: struggling young singer with a dark family past and issues with his doubting parent or spouse finds fame, nearly loses fame due to drugs and alcohol and then either (depending on star being profiled) gets clean and has a comeback (Cash, Ray Charles) or ODs and becomes a legend (Elvis, Jim Morrison).
However, because Cash and Carter themselves approved the script and (I think) the cast before their deaths, and because both of them were not the type of people to sugarcoat their (admittedly often turbulent) lives, most the cliches have just enough of a twist from "real life" to make work.
For example: Cash's father, incredibly well played by Robert "T-1000" Patrick, seems like the standard cliched "angry critical distant father" for most of the film. However, just when you think that's the whole of the character, the father finally tells the drugged out, drunk, Cash something he needed to hear: just because he (the father) was a mean drunk when Cash was growing up, doesn't mean that Cash needs to be. "I was a dirt poor sharecropper without any talent and I quit drinking years ago" the father tells Cash. "You've got fame and talent. What's your excuse?" And that, along with June, helps open Cash's eyes to what a screwup he's become.
Most importantly, however, the film works because the cast is excellent. Along with Patrick, Phoenix and Witherspoon both turned in great, Oscar-worthy work.
Over the years, I'd see Cash on TV regularly. Even after his show was canceled, Cash and Carter made regular appearances on TV specials and musical variety shows. In terms of live shows, I was fortunate enough to see Cash twice. Once in the late 80s as part of the "Highwaymen" tour (Waylon, Willie, Kris Kristofferson and Cash) and again with June Carter and his regular band during what I think was probably his last tour in the mid to late 90s.
As such, I'm probably as familiar with Cash and Carter's mannerisms as any other member of the public. And both of them did great work capturing those mannerisms and making you care about the "stars" of the story.
Of the two leads, Witherspoon was the real revelation. You forgot you were looking at "famous actress Reese Witherspoon" and started believing you were watching a young June Carter, with all the charm and sass the woman had as late as the 1990s.
In fact, I defy any straight man to watch her in this movie and not wish she was YOUR girlfriend or wife. She's cute, she's funny, she even knows how to fish (better than Cash, in fact). And while she might flush your pills down the toilet and go after your drug dealer with a shotgun, she also knows that you don't mess with a man's career.
And she sang great. More traditional country than most of the tarted up Barbie dolls who populate the Nashville charts these days. I know its something of a cliche to say she deserves an Oscar, but I think she did.
Phoenix was also excellent. Unlike Witherspoon, there were a few times his performance seemed off, mostly in the scenes of a young Johnny Cash pre-Sun records. However, once he got to the scenes of Cash on stage, with his fellow pioneer rockers like Elvis, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, Phoenix was channeling full on dead to nuts Johnny Cash. I don't think anyone could have done a better job.
In fact, with the exception of the guy who played Elvis (albeit only in a few scenes), every actor in the movie did a good job, Along with Waylon's kid and Elvis, you had actors playing a lot of the early legends of rock and roll: Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison. They all did a good job playing legends who were, at the time, just a bunch of crazy kids playing what some fretted was "devil's music".
Can I recommend you go see it in a theater? Yes. If nothing else, it's a good date movie, but not a typical date movie. It has Reese Witherspoon and romance. But not in the way you usually seem them in "chick flicks." And it has the hard drinking, god fearing, rock and country mixing Man in Black, carrying himself with the kind of manly tragedy that you expect to see in a movie from Eastwood or Scorcese.
And it makes you want to run out and buy the "Live at Folsom Prison" concert album. Even if you already own it.
