Walk the Line Photo

Walk the Line

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin

Directed by: James Mangold / Fox

RS: 3of 4 Stars

2006

Did you know Johnny Cash was a pillhead? Director James Mangold makes Cash's addiction the central struggle of his two-and-a-quarter-hour biopic of the Man in Black, and as a result Walk the Line is less a movie about the man and his music than it is an E! True Hollywood-style John-and-June love story weighed down by a big bag of bennies. For sure, it's better than its ballyhooed brother film, Ray, and Joaquin Phoenix burns as a man obsessed. But part of what makes any story about a mythical figure interesting is the tug of war between light and dark, and instead of Johnny Cash the conflicted but deeply religious humanitarian we simply see a guy getting henpecked to hell by his frumpy first wife (Ginnifer Goodwin). Some scenes -- like June Carter (an excellent Reese Witherspoon) hurling beer bottles at a trashed Cash and refusing to be "that little Dutch boy with my finger in the dam" -- are great, but when Mangold attempts profundity, the contrivance is obvious. What the hell is a table saw doing backstage at Folsom Prison except so that Cash can gaze at it and flash back to how his brother died when they were little? Walk the Line is passable entertainment, but it lacks true insight into what made Cash a music immortal.