We missed this movie in the theater, and it finally popped up to the top in our netflix queue, a bit like cream rising to the top of the milk churn. This is an extremely well done biopic, that limits itself to the early career of Johnny Cash's life. The script is almost a little too clever, or perhaps the source material--Cash's own autobiographies--made things a little too clear, in that sometimes the connections between his actions and his childhood are so strong that it's like the screenwriter went in with a highlighter and marked the passages for you. For example, Cash and his brother go fishing in the first five minutes, and as they walk down the dirt road they run forward and slide in the dirt as well as balance the fishing poles in the palms of their hand. Later, when Cash leaves home to join the army, his joy in finally escaping the harsh confines of his father's house is shown by him running and sliding in the dirt, and then even later in the film he and June Carter go fishing, you see him balancing the pole in his hand, an indication of how much joy this is bringing him.

While almost distracting, such clear connections don't get in the way of the story, and the screenwriters have done a great job in concentrating on the love story between Cash and Carter. Everything in this movie builds to that, showing exactly why Cash was a boozer and an addict, the struggle between his success and his first wife, and how the music connected him to Carter, who had her own issues as the scion of country music's first family. Both Phoenix and Witherspoon are wonderfully understated in their portrayals, especially in the darker sections which has to be one of the better representations on screen of drug and alcohol addiction.

What's somewhat missing, although implied in several scenes, is a depiction of Cash and Carter's religious faith. The DVD contains some of the scenes that hit the cutting room floor and it looks like much of the more overt religious parts were excised in the final version, likely because they didn't feed as much into the courting part of their relationship and was more part of their lasting love for each other. If anything, this movie leaves you wanting more, to see a more complete life of Cash, and if anything, that's a triumph in itself.