Hello....my name is Joaquin Phoenix and I AM Johnny Cash

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2007)

Before I watched this movie, Johnny Cash was just a name to me. I knew the name but if anyone asked me to name one of his songs or sing one of the songs, I would have given them a shrug of the shoulders and a blank stare. So when "Walk the Line" was released in the cinemas, I really didn't know if I was interested enough to watch it. But a friend persuaded me and so I went. That was May 2006 (or thereabouts). Now it's January 2007 and I have just watched it on DVD for the third time.
"My momma told me son, always be a good boy and don't ever play with guns...".
The lyrics are now ingrained into my memory, his songs as familiar to me as my other favorite singers. Watching the movie for the first time made me go to iTunes afterwards and buy four of his albums! In other words, this movie is magnificent and you will have the words to his songs stuck in your head forever. Watching the movie, you'll be sub-consciously tapping your feet and your shoulders will start to sway back and forth...when Phoenix stops singing, you'll be shouting at the screen for him to sing another song.
"Love is a burning thing...and it makes a firey ring..."
Some of the elements of the movie are fairly standard as with other movies dealing with the life of a famous person - the inevitable conflicts with parents, the marriage problems with the first wife, the affair with the woman destined to be your second wife, the alcohol, the drugs, a death in the family and how it all makes the subject stronger and makes them go on to bigger and better things (the saying that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"). So in that respect, I found myself bored a little.
But where it livens up is the music. Phoenix IS Cash. He looks like Cash as a young man and Phoenix gets the voice right and the music is top-notch. Reese Witherspoon delivers a knock-out performance as Cash's long-suffering singing partner, June Carter.
The best part is at the beginning of the movie when we get a slow close-up shot of the deserted yard at Folsom Prison and then we hear the steady THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of the prison audience stamping their feet and patiently waiting for Cash, while the back-up band plays warm-up tunes and looking nervous, thinking the prisoners are going to go crazy and start smashing things. Meanwhile in the back, Cash is in a dream and when the prison warden approaches him, Cash is suddenly transported back to his childhood in 1944 and there his story starts.
When you watch this, be prepared to be singing Johnny Cash songs for weeks afterwards! Then put aside some time afterwards to go shopping for a nice guitar because if "Walk the Line" doesn't inspire you to start playing the guitar yourself, nothing will.