Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Walk the Line is a biopic about country singer Johnny Cash. His life hit trouble early on, when his brother has a terrible accident and Johnny is, if not quite outright blamed by his father, blamed for being the one who survived who he wasn’t the favourite child with apparently most potential. As he goes through life Johnny seems almost a victim of his own talents though he’s not averse to seizing opportunities. As he tries to hit the big time he meets and falls for a singer named June Carter. They are married – trouble is, not to each other.

Cash’s life is a roller-coaster of success and tragedy, which is most often self-inflicted. As so often is the case with successful musicians, drug addiction plays a major factor in how his problems. He seems to hurt everyone he cares about. The downward tumble takes a long time to reach his lowest ebb in life, but the uphill struggle to regain what he has lost looks like it will take even longer.

The story starts right in the middle of his famous appearance at Folsom Prison, then goes back to his childhood. We revisit Folsom later, having seen just how it becomes such a focal point in his career. Just as a side point there are a few other famous singers of the era depicted in the film, including Jerry Lee Lewis (played by Waylon Payne) and a brief appearance by Elvis Presley (Tyler Hilton).

The film is about triumph over despair and getting a second chance to do things right, but I have to admit that overall I found the majority of the film quite depressing. Fans will be pleased to know that his most famous songs are there (though I was disappointed at the lack of “A Boy Named Sue”!), and as far as I can tell, not being a great fan of either, both Joaqin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, who play Cash and Carter respectively, seem to sound authentic enough. (They both performed all their own singing.) The plot was intense in places but somehow didn’t grab my attention as much as the previous year’s Ray (the biopic of Ray Charles) did. It was certainly watchable and intriguing, but somehow not compelling.

Singing aside, both Phoenix and Witherspoon’s performances were excellent, and there was a really supporting cast with Robert Patrick as Cash senior and Ginnifer Goodwin as Cash’s first wife. There weren’t many special effects – Walk the Line is a completely character-driven movie and works well as such. The camerawork is clever in places and the sets were well designed. In fact there’s very little I could possibly say against this movie as such, but I just felt quite distant from the main characters and thus never quite got involved with what was going on. Also, though I quite like the music in the movie, none of it grabbed me. Somehow I feel that this is a movie that you will enjoy much more if you are already a fan of Johnny Cash and his music. (With it reaching the hallowed position of being voted into IMDB’s top 250 films of all time list it certainly must have a lot of fans though, and thus a lot of Johnny Cash fans if my previous supposition is right!) There was a little humour sprinkled in the movie, and to me a little more would have lightened the overall mood a little and made the movie more enjoyable. I think Director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) had a definite mood he wanted to create, and that was quite a dark one. It worked in many ways, I just felt that overall the film dragged a little in some places, with the runtime of 136 minutes seeming a touch overlong.

Overall however I thought Walk the Line was a good movie, but not a great one. I recommend you see it anyway, but I recommend it much more if you’re a Johnny Cash fan. The rating is 12A (UK) / PG13 (USA) for some brief bad language, thematic material and scenes of drug abuse. (Parents who might be concerned about the drug usage should know that it’s consistently depicted in an extremely negative light.)


Related Links


Ray


Joaquin Phoenix - Gladiator

Reese Witherspoon - Legally Blonde

Top Ten Movies of 2005 (I haven’t put Walk The Line in this yet as I can’t work out where it should go - it's definitely a good film but there were other, perhaps less well done films that I preferred simply because they made me laugh more.)


Recommended: Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older