Preaching to the convicted

The problem with films about the life of superstars is that they tend to travel more or less the same route. There's the difficult childhood, the first stab at success, the increasing fame and fortune, the scarred relationships and the fight against the showbiz diversions of sex, drink and drugs.

James Mangold's biopic has all this but still achieves what it sets its heart on, which is a reasonable summation of the lives and times of Johnny Cash, the singer who faced more demons than most but sang about them in his songs in a unique way. For this we have to thank Joaquin Phoenix's tough but eloquent performance as Cash. His acting is the best he's given us and he mimics the Cash bass with creditable authenticity.

But this is not a one-horse film by any means. Mangold, who made the promising Heavy (1995) and Copland (1997) before relapsing into the shallower waters of Girl Interrupted (1999), paints the Memphis scene with flair. He lays particular emphasis on the continuous touring that ruined Cash's first marriage but which caused him to fall for June Carter - a supporting singer who remained with him for the rest of his life.

The story ends with their marriage and the suggestion that that was the end of the drink and drugs. And while it is true that Cash's later life, which ended soon after Carter died, is also fascinating, we might have had a film as long as King Kong if Mangold had carried on.

The director and Phoenix conspire to show us how powerful the Cash repertoire was compared with most of the music of the time, speaking as it did to ordinary people about their often difficult lives with extraordinary power. The scenes in the prisons that Cash visited - and performed at - are particularly good, and here we understand June's description of the singing as "being steady as a train and sharp as a razor". Phoenix has commented on how terrified he was of imitating the Cash voice, and it's a minor miracle that he has succeeded so well.

Reese Witherspoon plays June - the girl who would become Cash's muse but who also had a career of her own - as a singer capable of comedy too. It's a part that requires her to come across as a likely match for a great singer, and she manages it with verve. Lucas Till is excellent as the young Cash, traumatised by the death of his older brother, and Ginnifer Goodwin as Cash's first wife deserves praise, too.

If Walk the Line only suggests the complexities of Cash's character, without which he probably wouldn't have been able to succeed so well with his songs, it does take the clichés of the genre, shake them up and put them on the screen with renewed vigour. In that, it is better and a little more honest than last year's Ray, which told the troubled tale of Ray Charles.

Walk The Line
Cert: 12A