Heartfelt film is impassioned without being energetic...

Rating: 6/10 (1 March 2006)

Strangely low-keyed musical-bio on country great Johnny Cash, his humble beginnings in a dysfunctional household to his first, unsuccessful marriage and quick rise to stardom often alongside future wife June Carter, with whom he had a rocky courtship. Based on two separate books by Cash, the film has very fine musical sequences and keen eyes and ears for the nuances of troubled families, but after the first 90 minutes the film seems to get stuck in a rut. Director James Mangold, a careful and talented filmmaker, doesn't utilize the slower-paced scenes to underscore anything meaningful--instead it just feels like sluggish narcissism. Cash's drug dependency and eventual withdrawal is well-wrought without a lot of hysterics, but Mangold's staging of these moments is clichéd (he's seen too many movies himself). The budding, on-again/off-again romance with June is surprisingly complicated (she wasn't one to give in easily), but it probably wasn't wise to shape the final chapters of the movie on whether or not Carter would say yes or no to Johnny's numerous proposals (and Reese Witherspoon's pouty fierceness tends to make Carter look hard-headed in place of willful). The picture is surely a handsome one, with lots of fine tunes and terrific period atmosphere, but Joaquin Phoenix peaks early in his lead portrayal (at the Sun Records audition) and the other performances are peculiarly uneven. **1/2 from ****