I would say I'm not one to judge, being a huge Johnny Cash fan, because my opinion could be biased. However, you know me, the fact that a Hollywood movie about Cash was getting made pissed me off the second I heard it, so the new fact that this flick didn't piss me off says something.

While those of us who know and love the story of Cash's life may feel cheated that they didn't include some of his most movie-worthy moments, such as when he got high and accidentally burned down an entire forest preserve that held the largest population of the American condor and when he crawled into a cave to die and June somehow found him (the real moment when he swore off drugs, which is even more suprisingly absent here), we do get enough fact to not feel manipulated. For those of us who don't know shit about Johnny and June, this will fill you in on one of the great American love stories and stand by itself as a romance movie that has actual chemistry between the two leads and a real feeling of what romance is (no, it's not just the crap that pleases Carrie Bradshaw and any other disgustingly shallow fictional retard we've come to know and sadly relate to, it can look ugly too, which makes it the kind people write about instead of conjure up and then try to live out).

I'll say it, Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon were the best choices of any to play the couple. Both have shown talent in earlier dramatic work (Witherspoon's may have been a bit longer ago, but she's shown it), but both could have been bad mistakes without the demands made on them by director James Mangold, who seems to have dropped his "I-wish-I-were-Martin-Scorsese bullshit and come up with something we can tell is personal here while remaining true to his subjects.

It's hard to tell by watching previews, but Pheonix and Witherspoon truly embody their roles to the point where we actually feel at the important moments that we're indeed watching a couple go through some shit (instead of pretty actors groveling for Oscars). In an age where Leotardo DiCrapio is Howard Hughes and Hayden Canadian makes Darth Vader gay (one getting an Oscar nod for doing so and the other actually hired by Darth Vader's inventor), one couldn't be rightfully surprised if they got James Van Der Beek to play Cash and Joshua Jackson to play June, so seeing one American icon honored instead of sodomized on a big screen is enough of a relief to celebrate.

The story here is a love story -- maybe that doesn't cover lost of ground, but it does cover what was the most important to these two people. Even for those who don't dig most love stories, it's with movies like this where we can be reminded of how we really just don't dig crappy, contrived love stories, and that a good story is what it is, no matter what exact genre.

With the exception of maybe a little too much onstage footage (as opposed to offstage, where the real meat of this flick is -- not to take away from the leads' voices, both of which are surprisingly competent), the worst casted Elvis Presley ever, a slightly cookie cutter opening (childhood trauma hits right at the ten minute mark), and what could have been a more graceful ending, "Walk the Line" does its subjects justice and makes for a good movie at the same time, which earns it its credit.

Some retarded sack of shit bitch who reviews flicks for the LA Weekly complained in her review of this thing that it's not as true and naked as Gus Van Sant's "Last Days," the flick so loosely based on what Van Sant IMAGINED Kurt Cobain's last days to be that one might call it a hoola hoop picture. Can't remember what her name was, but if you're a film student (likely trying constantly to come off as deep and understanding of films others find boring), I still challenge you to make it through "Last Days" without wanting to phucking kill yourself the REAL way Kurt Cobain did. Go see "Walk the Line." Yeah, it's got a few cliches, but what's important is that it brings something new to the table of not only biopics, but movies alone -- a believable story about real people that are actually actors pretending.

FOUR BONGS