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Review:
 Musical
biopics aren't always successful. For every “Ray” there's a “De
Lovely.” It all depends on how the thing is marketed and by whom.
Tales of southern musicians for some reason always seem to be
popular, and Johnny Cash was one of the biggest of them all.
As is traditional with this sort of thing, we start about
three-fourths the way in, in this case, we meet Johnny Cash
(Joaquin Phoenix)waiting “backstage” at his immortal Folsom prison
concert before flashing back to 1944 where our hero(Ridge Canipe)
and his older brother Jack(Lucas Till)
are picking cotton with their parents(Shelby Lynne and Robert
Patrick) somewhere in what was once Dixie. Jack dies tragically,
and Dad blames the accident on Johnny and hates him forevermore…
Till turns into Phoenix and as such he joins the army winds up in
Germany where he writes music and proposes marriage over the phone
to his sweetheart Carrie(Shelby Lynne), and by the time their
first kid is born, he's about to make his breakthrough in music,
even though Carrie doesn't really like his career choice, and
never does seem to like the idea of his going out on the road.
Of course on the road with the pioneers of rock'n'roll Elvis(Tyler
Hilton), Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne), Waylon Jennings (Shooter
Jennings), Roy Orbison (Johnathan Rice) and other usual suspects,
our hero meets the beauteous June Carter(Reese Witherspoon) and
there's the tempestuous premarital relationship which would last
well over a decade. He has the usual ups and downs having to do
with sex and drugs, he WAS a musician after all.
Witherspoon is brilliant. She's always brilliant. She was even
wonderful in “Legally Blonde 2” which was otherwise horrid.
Everybody else is actually pretty good too. If you like country
music, you'll like the film. Even if you don't.
Eric Lurio
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