Poor script results in Disappointing Movie

Rating: 5/10 (3 March 2006)

I really wanted to like this film. It started off well enough with a throbbing rockabilly beat and Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash waiting to take the stage at Folsom Prison, but the film took too long a detour to get back there. I just could not understand the motivations of either Cash or his long pursued love interest, Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, specifically, as to why they made the choices they did. Cash comes across as an arrogant pill popping bully, and Carter as a very confused woman. I realize that biopics are hard to make. The old ones made in Hollywood in the 1930s were almost entirely fictional. This one I believe tried to be true to life. However, Cash's life was in truth and fact dramatic enough that a better story could have been told.