A strong genre-movie

Rating: 7/10 (25 March 2006)

Joaquin Phoenix as the American legend Johnny Cash could be interesting I thought when I entered the cinema, and his performance here is absolutely fantastic. As Cash goes from being a upcoming-artist to becoming a superstar and then becoming a drug-addicted before becoming a rock & roll legend. This way Cash' career is one of the most interesting in the history of rock, the way his gloomy personality hits the surface threw his lyrics and live performances.
Walk the Line is definitely a genre-based movie, keeping itself very clean and straight-forward, though this could have made it a bit dull, this is not the case at all. Mangold makes a very strong and sharp drama movie, mostly because this is the biography of a man having such a deep personality that you can't avoid it being interesting. And with this Mangold doesn't make these big risks, instead he chooses being safe and classic. So; Phoenix gives the movie a double-kick with his fine performance, and with the fabulous Reese Witherspoon as June Carter this movie suddenly includes two performances so strong that the movie never hits a boring period. And there's a lot of smart supporting scenes here, as the movie features Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison for a second there (Bob Dylan's mentioned too), the movie is very correct having all of these materials mixed together. Showing off the differences between music then and now, which itself is highly entertaining.
When you're going for such a heavy character as Johnny Cash, it's very difficult right from the outset, but Phoenix deserves a lot of honor for doing it the way he did. He puts the darkness into the country-pioneer, especially in the period of the movie where Cash is doing a lot of drugs, but in the same time he makes Cash very emotionally fine with his feelings for June and in the way he tries treating his wife, showing that he may struggle and do some failures, but in the end Cash really just want to be a good boy. It's one of the best genre-movies in a very long time, and Walk the Line will surely be a classic, especially among fans.