Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15659 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-02-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Original language: English, Russian
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 135 minutes

Amazon.com
A solid and entertaining biopic, Walk the Line works less as a movie than an actors' showcase for its stars. Joaquin Phoenix's total immersion into the skin of singer Johnny Cash is startling--watching it, you can't believe this is the same guy who whined about being "vexed" in Gladiator. As he evolves from a farm boy to gospel croonin' plunker to the Man in Black, Phoenix disappears into Cash's deep baritone, his way of slinging the guitar onto his back, and his hunched-up style of strumming. But it's more than just picking up mannerisms: Phoenix also sings as Johnny Cash, and it's quite impressive.

The story of how Johnny Cash became Johnny Cash traces from his childhood under a distant father (Robert Patrick) to his early attempts at a music career, during which he married his girlfriend Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin). During a tour with the likes of Elvis (Tyler Hilton) and Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Malloy Payne), he encounters singer June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and his love for her--and her rejection of him through the years--spurs him into drugs, drinking, and depression. As with most movies based on real-life singers, as his popularity grows, the women come a-flockin', and the childhood demons surface. Witherspoon, who matches Phoenix drawl for drawl, plays June both as a sassy spitfire whose charm breaks your heart, and as a sympathetic friend who tries to help Cash get over--well, her. The love story is what endures, but the movie comes most alive during its musical numbers, and even if you're not a country fan, it may just get you to run out and buy a Johnny Cash album.--Ellen A. Kim

Customer Reviews

Johnny Cash Fan
Being A Johnny Cash fan, I loved this movie...
Joaquin Phoenix really resembles "The Man In Black"

Reese Witherspoom resembles June Carter
the only question that I have is :Couldn't they( the people at
the movie studio ) have taught them how to sing?

I'm tired of movies in which the stars only lip synch to the sound track( Sweet Dreams is the best example of this fraudulant practice)
Since ,this is a biopic ,I'd Expect Joaquin Pheonix to at least to play the guitar,instead of faking it!!

Perfect Portrait of the Man in Black
Here we have the rather luscious and dangerous Joaquin Phoenix channeling Johnny Cash in WALK THE LINE. At the literal heart of the movie is Cash's longstanding and long-unrequited love for June Carter (the ever ebullient Reese Witherspoon finally being allowed to put her Nashville accent to good use) and the trials and travails he must suffer before finally settling down with the love of his life. From the foot-stomping power of the very first scene, music is the thread that binds these two restless hearts and what makes the movie even more remarkable is that Phoenix and Witherspoon did all of their own singing!

(Originally published on the website of author Teresa Medeiros at www.teresamedeiros.com)

a testament to both the legend of its subject, and to the talents of its stars
Joaquin Phoenix probably would have won the Oscar for his portrayal of Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line" if only Jamie Foxx hadn't won the prize a year earlier for playing Ray Charles. The Oscars didn't want to look like the Grammys, so they gave the golden guy to Philip Seymour Hoffman for a less complex performance as Truman Capote.

Phoenix is better, though (and does his own singing), and director James Mangold, in a commentary, praises the actor unabashedly. One of the most memorable scenes has Cash watching from the wings as Elvis Presley (played by Tyler Hilton) wows a crowd of screaming teenagers. Without uttering a single word, Phoenix conveys a range of emotions. At first, he's admiring. Then he appears momentarily jealous of qualities Elvis has that are lacking in his own performance. Finally, he shakes off any feelings of envy he may have and is once more admiring, much too impressed with his colleague to let petty feelings intrude.

Biopics tend to follow a too predictable path, an unavoidable template when dealing with the kind of lives considered worthy of cinematic treatment. There's the early life and its troubles often depicted as providing the impetus for the subject's later success. There's the scene in which the hero discovers his talent or calling and struggles to effectively develop or present it to whomever (in this case, Sun Records' producer Sam Phillips) holds the power to bring it to the world. Then you've got the predictable rise and, sometimes, the fall. "Walk the Line" doesn't stray from the formula yet makes the cliches of the genre seem fresh because they allow Johnny Cash to appear not merely as a legend, an almost Mount Rushmore figure in popular music, but as a man full of doubts about his talent and his soul, and Phoenix captures him superbly.

Cash never really had a downfall comparable to Elvis Presley's, but he struggled with addiction, only overcoming his demons through the love of June Carter. He had career setbacks, but the film ends before Cash was dumped from the Columbia label and also stops short of detailing his eventual return to glory through the series of brooding recordings he made for producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings. It's a fine, superbly realized film, a testament to both the legend of its subject, and to the talents of its stars.

Brian W. Fairbanks