Walk The Line
(dir. James Mangold)
Biopic of the young Johnny Cash, following his upbringing by his tough father following the death of his brother, his start in the music business, his being offered drugs by Elvis' cronies, addiction and constant pursuit of hottie singer June Carter.
Joachim Phoenix was nothing special and I can see why he missed out on the Oscar nod. Unfortunately the same goes for Reese Witherspoon, both were OK and you could even assume they put in reasonable impressions of their characters, it was just that the story itself itself just wasn't that interesting. There was no real drama, goal or end point and in fact it pretty much just finished after the famous Folsom prison show.
The execution was very dull, and cliched... so much so that I thought the first half was simply setting up things for some kind of dark twist which never came. When things were hard it was raining, when they were good everything was sunny. I expected more from James Mangold after Copland... but then he did also bring us Identity. He meanders us through the story, broadcasting the drama to us in cliched and obvious ways (on the phone: "Stop cryin', I can hardly hear what your saying!") and then it just comes to a fairly abrupt but not unwelcome end.
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14th Mar 2006 - Tumblr
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