The depictions are very good, but the vocals are outstanding!

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2006)

*** out of **** stars
It's difficult for me to refrain from making comparisons between Walk the Line and Ray. Both movies showcase a main character who is an innovative musician, an addict, and a "what happens on the road, stays on the road" Lothario. Let's also not forget the vigilant wife left at home with the kids as the consolation prize. One of the best films of 2004, Ray is more successful than Walk the Line on every level. But you have to give Director James Mangold credit for creating a film that has been so widely recognized only one year after Taylor Hackford's masterpiece.
Walk the Line stars Joaquin Phoenix as a convincing Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as an even more convincing June Carter. Most of the movie focuses on the years of turbulence in both of their lives until their eventual union. Phoenix does a very good job of playing a sad, broken and numb Cash, a man who is easy to pick apart. He's hooked on speed, driven - sometimes to a fault - because of a castigating father, and in love with a woman who won't have him because her complexities outweigh his, which is why when Witherspoon enters a scene the movie belongs to her more than it does to Phoenix. June's marital problems span several years with several men, it seems, through little fault of her own. She has made bad choices, and lives with enormous internal guilt and embarrassment because of them. Reese portrays a June who's extremely likable because of her ability to bury her emotional grief and unflinchingly dazzle audiences with her exercised talent as a sweet yet smug entertainer. She's instantaneously forgiving to legalistic strangers who criticize her for her "sins", and too saintly a soul for the likes of Johnny Cash.
But we still want them to hook up anyway.
I felt there was a certain amount of conflict and urgency missing in the telling of this love story amidst a lot of meditative tranquility and brightness. The sun seemed like it was up a lot, without a cloud in the sky or a wind to stir the trees. I'm not one to wish for rainstorms or lightning, but it could have made for an appropriate and occasional backdrop to such an angry, desperate and damaged man. Cash wore black for a reason.
Like Ray, Walk the Line gravitates toward the musical performances. It is now well known (and I didn't know this when I first saw the movie) that Phoenix and Witherspoon actually sang as Cash and Carter and absolutely nailed it! Their depictions were excellent but their voices were extraordinarily dead-on. After first seeing and hearing them sing together, I was consistently chomping at the bit for them to take the stage again, and again, while the melodrama behind the music unfolded. If Joaquin and Reese ever decide to book gigs as the legendary couple, I'll buy tickets, front row, and enjoy their show even more than I did the movie.