I rented this biopic about Johnny Cash with some trepidation, because I've been a fan for years and didn't think it possible to evoke him, his life, and his music on film... but I was impressed. Joachin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon did a fantastic job, even doing their own singing.
Even if you're not a fan of classic country (proto-rock and roll, that is), it's a superb film, and a fine tribute to a real American genius.

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He had a crazy dark side, and yeah, it got out of hand to some extent when he got on the roller coaster of booze, uppers and downers- typical for musicians who are doing a few hundred one-nighters in a row. No excuse, I know, but that's how guys like that wind up hooked on drugs. He battled drug addiction, bad memories, marital strife and poor health for most of his life. And he could be ornery- he didn't like liars, cheaters, and phonies, and he didn't care who knew it. He shot from the hip.
  He onced described himself as "a dove with claws", when asked (during the Vietnam War) if he was a "dove" or a "hawk". I can relate to that.

But he never "shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die"... he was busted once for hauling pills in his car from Mexico, and spent the night in jail a couple of times for sleeping in the park, that sort of thing. He wasn't a badass, he just got in trouble a few times.
  And a trickster: one of my favorite "hotel hijinks" stories ever (recounted by Willie Nelson, I believe, in a TV interview once) involves Johnny Cash: in the 60s, when his star was high and so was he most of the time, he once went out and bought a few dozen baby chickens somewhere, turned them loose in his hotel room, then called the front desk and said "Hey, this is Johnny Cash- there's a bunch of chicks up here in my room runnin' around, can y'all come up here and get rid of 'em for me?" He split before hotel security arrived... they were expecting crazed groupies, and found.... fuzzy yellow chicks.

Towards the end of his life he cleaned up his act, and beat the odds by not only surviving to old age unlike many of his peers, but putting out a few incredible albums at an age when many of his living peers probably couldn't even tune a guitar anymore, let alone write and sing. He even had the guts to cover Depeche Mode, Soundgarden, and Danzig tunes- somehow making them sound like he wrote them, because he was a different sort of "sensitive guy"...  sort of a lightning rod for human suffering. His own songs were usually, simple, stark, and very deep, whether he was singing about good times or bad.

One of my few regrets is that I never got to see him in concert... he was a cool dude, and a great artist.