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Walk the Line
Rated PG-13 for some language, thematic material and depiction of drug dependencyes.
The dots it connects are familiar: childhood tragedy; early struggles; meteoric success; a first marriage that wears out; a romance designed to be celebrated; estrangement; addiction and synchronized personal and professional triumphs.
The film is relatively light on its subject's music ("I Walk the Line," "Ring of Fire," "Jackson"). The screenplay by Gill Dennis concentrates most the gradual build toward the Cash-Carter marriage.
Because it begins and ends in 1968, with most of the story being told as a flashback, "Walk the Line" omits later highlights such as Cash's ABC primetime show, his movies and his biggest hit song, "A Boy Called Sue."
It does scotch the myth that Cash had a prison record; he spent one night in a jail.
Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do all of the vocals themselves as Johnny and June, supported notably by Ginnifer Goodwin as first wife Vivian Liberto and Robert Patrick as Johnny's disapproving dad Ray.
Phoenix mines Cash's fallibility, if not the granite. He has the sneer and performance style. Perhaps in deference to Cash, who reportedly picked him for the part, or maybe to ease mass consumption, he de-emphasizes the singer's trademark surliness, making him instead a needy man-child craving June's approval as a substitute for his father's.
Witherspoon offers her strongest work to date as a performer with a strong offstage sense of herself and a warm, perky presence that audiences adored.
James Mangold's on-the-nose direction is precise and economical, its surest footing being in the father-son friction and the Folsom Prison scenes.
