Category: Movies Walk The Line

As far as American lore is concerned, our first love is always the redeemed outlaw. Johnny Cash lived this fable. A man whose discography alone is enough to mark a major achievement, his life was more than years of recording.
Starring Joaquin Pheonix as Mr. Cash himself, the movie is laid out like many a biopic has been in the last few years. From Ali to Ray, these movies strive to give us knowledge of household names. A little bit of their childhood tragedy, the long hard road to the top, and the subsquent falter, and then the nice triumph over adversity. Ali was pretty boring, but I don't like sports. Ray was indulgent, but so is Walk The Line. Whereas a normal movie the rather run of the mill plot can be blamed on a lack of creativity in Hollywood, the biopic genre is glutted.
As I said this story is etched as an archetypes myth in our minds, like Horatio Alger's success stories, holding the secret to the American Dream. What makes Walk the Line float to the top of this crowded aquarium, is not the story, but how it gives all the context to his early material. From Folsom Prison Blues, as a cry against the Air Force, to Ring of Fire coming out of June Carter mourning Johnny's drug addiction.
whereas many biopics feels incomplete or cut and paste, Walk the Line does well as a real plot. It fits together well and the narrative and theme is consistent. Director James Mangold did a wonderful job here. I definitely give this a Great.