Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1824 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: 136 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

Movie is great but 2nd Disc a Disappointment
A dilemna here. I loved the movie- think the performances are just terrific. The sound and video are really top-notch and the music really enjoyable. I also enjoyed the deleted scens on the first disc and really to think this is a movie worth adding to the personal collection. The problem I have is the features added to the 2-disc collection. They just are not very good. An example- a special on the Folsom Prison concert- clearly one of the most important steps in Cash's career. The special, though it has interesting excerpts of interviews from people who were there, does not have any footage or stills of the actual concert. I found the same to be true of the other specials on the disc as well. Lots of shots of the two stars but very little of the "Man in Black" himself. I would encourage people to buy the movie but to skip the special edition. It just is not worth the extra money, unless you really need five postcards of the stars from the film.

They Got Married In A Fever
I will preface this by saying I was never a big Johnny Cash fan, but after seeing the excellent way Hollywood handled Ray Charles ("Ray") and Bobby Darin ("Beyond the Sea") I was anxious to see what it would do for The Man in Black. The results are phenomenal. Now, I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention to John and June when they were still living.

Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are phenomenal as Johnny and June Carter Cash. This unlikely casting yields such outstanding results that I would hand them both the Oscar right now if I could. I read that Reese almost bailed on the project when she found out she had to do her own singing, but you would never know it from the great vocals and spunky performances she delivers.

The film focuses on their love affair, first as friends and then torrid even while he was married to his first wife and the mother of his children. His drug abuse is highlighted but it is Johnny Cash, the complex man and his love for June Carter, darling daughter of the close-knit and totally supportive Carter clan, that comes shining through and makes this a totally enjoyable movie.

Two big thumbs up for a movie that thrills from its opening at the infamous Folsom Prison to its spectatcular closing.

Hmmm. Doesn't look like Nancy and Lee
In WALK THE LINE, Joaquin Phoenix shows that he's come a long way since his role as the crazy Caesar in GLADIATOR.

Those going into WALK THE LINE thinking it's a comprehensive film bio of Johnny Cash may perhaps come out slightly disappointed. While there's a relative brief sequence of his early years growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm, an even briefer sequence of his time in the Air Force in the early 50s, the film really begins in 1955 when, failing as a door-to-door salesman and wannabe gospel singer, he cuts a rock 'n' roll record for Sun Studios in Memphis and his career as a CW crooner takes off. The film ends with his marriage to June Carter in 1968. In between, against the backdrop of early hits, it focuses on his failed marriage to first wife Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), his self-destructive abuse of amphetamines, and rocky relationship with singer/actress Carter (Reese Witherspoon), a twice-divorced single mother of two.

The real treat of WALK THE LINE is watching Phoenix and Witherspoon amaze with Oscar-caliber dramatic performances. Who would have suspected that the latter was capable of anything other than light comedy?

In case you haven't seen the film and you're wondering, Phoenix and Witherspoon themselves sing the Cash/Carter material; they're surprisingly effective. Mind you, I've never been such a Cash fan that I've possessed any of his albums, and I've only previously downloaded one of his songs ("City of New Orleans"). Indeed, when Phoenix and Witherspoon recreate the Cash/Carter duet of "Jackson", my first thought was: Didn't Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood do that?

Coming out of the screening, my wife remarked that Phoenix sounded very much like Johnny himself. My response was a non-committal but prudent "Mmmm". Back home at the computer, I downloaded a couple more Cash songs, including his "Jackson" duet with Carter. To my ears, the real Cash had a singing voice that was slightly hoarser, and with a more pronounced slow drawl than Joaquin's version. While that doesn't detract from the actor's performance, it may cause purists to grumble.

The film's opening scene is of two guards on a tower at Folsom Prison listening to the bass "thump, thump, thump" washing over the prison yard from the hall in which Cash is about to perform his famous concert before the inmates. My wife and I were sitting in the front row of the studio screening theater and the sound reverberated through our bones. I knew then that WALK THE LINE was going to be an exceptional film.