Review of Walk the Line (2005) by Dennism. — 10 Mar 2006
If you are happy seeing Johnny Cash turned into Forest Gump, but creepier and more morose - this the film. If you know nothing about Johnny Cash, and are curious to know more, this is not a good place to start.
Walk The Line uses a standard formula of revealing a man through showing him in his most desperate hours, to gain attention for itself first and foremost, and in so doing lacks subtlety and heart. Surprisingly, the film does not seem overly interested in the music (Cash band member's have barely a couple of line's to say in the movie combined) and as a consequence, music and artist seem somehow disconnected.
But of course the focus of the film is the agonising moments in the personal life of the man who made the music, or more specifically his pursuit of a woman that for a number of years, he couldn't have.
Barely a minute into the only song we see from the famous Fulsom prison concert, the scene is cut, in favour of a bus moving through the dark night, where Johnny (helpless as a dog on heat) wakes June up and says "will you marry me".
His persistence eventually wears June down, and by the end of the film you can only try to remember that Johnny Cash was also a man with an immense sense of personal dignity, charm, intelligence, warmth and humour - as one might find in a Cash performance of the song Big River (about yearning for a woman).
This review of Walk the Line (2005) was written by Dennism. on 10 Mar 2006.
Walk the Line has generally received very positive reviews.
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