Not bad as a bio-pic

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2005)

Being a product of the 1950s, I grew up on Johnny Cash. His music was the soundtrack for my adolescence ('way back When Country Wasn't Cool) and he was among several whom I idolized...such hero-worship inspired me to seek a profession in music, myself; this led to a media career that is now thirty-plus years in existence.
Fans always exist, but my affinity with Cash took on a special significance, due in part to the fact that we both came from the same sweltering little area of south Arkansas, both were raised hellfire-and-damnation Southern Baptist (and both overcame it), and we even had mutual acquaintances, although I never met the man.
Having read both of his autobiographies and the 1969 bio by George Carpozi, Jr., I entered a St. Louis, Missouri theater prepared to be the worst critic ever to have two thumbs. My surprise came in several waves. There is faithful attention paid to Cash's recollections (in Man In Black and Cash: An Autobiography), especially when the viewer understands that for the most part, each scene in the movie is a compilation of numerous scenes from real life. There are nuances  such as the scene on the tour bus, when Cash makes his way back to June to propose. Enroute, he encounters a sleeping Luther Perkins, who is holding a lit cigarette, and Cash gently crushes out the smoke for his friend. Not in the film, but Perkins was to die several months later as a result of burns from a fire caused by his sleeping with a lit cigarette.
One thing that puzzles me, though, is that there is enough fact about Cash's hell-raising to make two movies and a sequel. It's hardly a topic in this film. Cash's writings about his own life took me on dark treks where he would lash the wheel of a Jeep, close his eyes and drive blindly through the desert, expecting to crash and die. He was fined nearly a million dollars for setting a forest on fire. He was known for trashing hotel rooms with chainsaws. His epiphany and road to recovery from drug abuse came after a climactic episode when he crawled into a cave that was well-known to be a hopeless series of labyrinths, in an attempt at a final escape from the world. How come no one has ever done a movie about any of this? Finally, Joachim Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, both gifted and skilled actors, don't look or sound like Johnny and June, but they have enough talent to make the play work. The choice for supporting players was a bit disappointing (with all the Elvis impersonators on the planet, one would think it wouldn't be tough to find an actor who looks like the King), but there is one breathtaking bit of casting that deserves some award or reward. Dan John Miller as Luther Perkins is the dog-goned-est reincarnation I've ever seen on a screen. Other than that, the casting is so-so.
But I highly recommend this film for the story, the sound, the music and the energy. If ol' Johnny is helpin' out St. Peter right now, he's probably gotten permission to take his show into Hell, itself and entertain the damned.