The film follows Cash's early life, his romance with the singer June Carter, his ascent in the country music scene, and his drug addiction.
Walk the Line premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2005, and was theatrically released by 20th Century Fox on November 18.
Two decades earlier, in 1944, 12-year-old Johnny is raised on a cotton farm in Dyess, Arkansas, with his brother Jack, his abusive father Ray, his mother Carrie, and his two sisters.
The couple moves to Memphis, Tennessee, where Cash works as a door-to-door salesman to support his growing family, but with little success.
One day, Johnny walks past a recording studio and is inspired to form a band to play gospel music.
The band tours as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, along with other rising stars Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis.
At the end of the film, Johnny invites June to join him for a duet, but stops in the middle of the song and tells her that he can't sing "Jackson" anymore unless she agrees to marry him.
[4] To prepare for her role as June Carter, Witherspoon studied videos of the singer; she also listened to her singing and telling stories to get her voice right.
[5] Walk the Line was released on November 18, 2005, in 2,961 theaters, grossing $22.3 million on its opening weekend behind Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The website's critical consensus reads: "Superior acting and authentic crooning capture the emotional subtleties of the legend of Johnny Cash with a freshness that is a pleasure to watch.
"[7] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
"[10][11] In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Carina Chocano wrote: "Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do first-rate work – they sing, they twang, they play new-to-them instruments, they crackle with wit and charisma, and they give off so much sexual heat it's a wonder they don't burst into flames.
"[12] A. O. Scott, in his review for The New York Times, had problems with Phoenix's performance: "Even though his singing voice doesn't match the original – how could it?
"[13] In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote: "A lot of credit for Phoenix's performance has to go to Mangold, who has always been good at finding the bleak melodrama in taciturn souls ...
"[14] Andrew Sarris, in his review for The New York Observer, praised Witherspoon for her "spine-tingling feistiness", and wrote: "This feat has belatedly placed it (in my mind, at least) among a mere handful of more-than-Oscar-worthy performances this year.
[16] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating and wrote: "While Witherspoon, a fine singer herself, makes Carter immensely likable, a fountain of warmth and cheer, given how sweetly she meshes with Phoenix her romantic reticence isn't really filled in.
"[18] In his review for Sight & Sound, Mark Kermode wrote: "Standing ovations, too, for Witherspoon, who has perhaps the tougher task of lending depth and darkness to the role of June, whose frighteningly chipper stage act - a musical-comedy hybrid - constantly courts (but never marries) mockery.
[20] Some critics found the film too constrained by Hollywood plot formulas of love and loss, ignoring the last twenty years of Cash's life and other more socio-politically controversial reasons he was considered "the man in black".
She did not enjoy the "painful" experience of seeing the film, "because it had the three most damaging events of my childhood: my parents' divorce, my father's drug addiction, and something else bad that I can't remember now".