Powerful entertainment

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2006)

Well dammit - I am not a country music fan and went to see this film kicking and screaming along with my wife - and loved it. The best adjective I can use when describing this film is Power. A powerful storyline with a huge performance by Joaquin Phoenix. To me,a Great Film starts strong from the very beginning...no need for a long build up to the point of entertaining the audience - just get us there quickly and keep us there without any lags or dead spots. This film delivers that with a superb screenplay that starts with his sharecropper childhood but doesn't dwell too long on it to the point of overdoing it. We get a good taste of his hardscrabble early life and the get to see the beginning of his lifelong relationship with his father - which is well continued throughout the film.
And yes as other critics have written, this music biopic goes into the usual portrayal of what musicians lives inevitably are like - touring, substance abuse, problems in personal relationships and - hopefully for them - a later life of good personal habits and steady relationships. The fact that so many musicians lives have followed this path, is not the fault of the screenwriter - this too - like Ray Charles - was the life of Johnny Cash as it has been with Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and ad infinitum numbers of individuals who make their living as recording and performing artists.
Phoenix's performance is spot on - both in terms of portraying Cash's on stage persona as well as his personal life and battles with drug addiction. Dammit he becomes Johnny Cash...What more can you say about an actor portraying the life of a performer?
Reese Witherspoon is superb in her role as June Carter Cash. Right out of the Legally Blonde mode and into a believable and realistic portrayal of the classic southern country girl who spends a lifetime on the stage... And the hell of it is - apparently both their voices are so good, they could be recording artists in their spare time...
Starts strong and never, ever lets up. Go see this sure to be Academy Award winner...