Walk The Line, in trying to bring the life of a complex giant musical talent to the screen, will inevitably be compared to last year’s musical biopic, “Ray.” This story of how a poor Arkansas farm boy overcomes the tragic loss of his older brother, an alcoholic father who blames him for it and his own booze and pill addiction to become Johnny Cash, “the man in black,” doesn’t quite measure up to the Ray Charles story. Yet it’s an entertaining film filled with music that has as its core one of the great show business love stories, that of Cash and June Carter.

Director James Mangold, whose credits are mostly small, independent films (“Cop Land,” “Girl, Interrupted”), doesn’t try anything fancy, using the classic flashback technique after opening on the scene of the famous Folsom Prison concert that transformed Cash from a successful but unremarkable singer to a crossover sensation with his own unique style. We are quickly transported to 1944 Dyess, Arkansas, where “JR”, as he was called, and his family eke out an existence as sharecroppers and the need for extra money leads to his brother’s fatal accident while handling dangerous mechanical equipment.

Fade to 1952, when Cash is drafted but gets sent to Germany instead of the war in Korea. It’s there where Cash, a country music addict from childhood, buys a guitar and hears June Carter on an Armed Forces Radio broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry.

Back home, Cash gets married and has kids without the means to support them, all the while trying to pursue a musical career his wife thinks is a pipedream. Auditioning with his band before the legendary Memphis record producer Sam Phillips, Cash is about to be dismissed as one of a hundred similar country music singers until he offers up some songs he wrote himself, songs with a darker edge and crossover appeal.

Suddenly, he’s thrown on tour with 50s rock legends Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings (played by son Shooter) and, yes, Elvis, who generously offers his stash of pills to the group. It’s on tour where he finally meets the older June Carter and begins a years long, largely platonic but increasingly intimate relationship with the also married singer before Carter gives in to Cash’s determined pursuit.

On the face of it, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are miscast as Cash and Carter. They are too pretty and their credits don’t indicate the depth required for these complex personalities, but their true acting abilities carry the day.

Phoenix, who insisted on doing his own singing, even successfully brings off some of Cash’s most famous numbers, including “Ring of Fire” and the Cash-Carter duet, “Jackson.” (I would have liked to see Phoenix’s rendition of “A Boy Named Sue,” not included in the film). Phoenix seems to mold himself into the character as Cash matures in the film, after falling to the depths of addiction and doing his best to wreck his career.

Witherspoon, who has excelled at light comedy, reaches back to her childhood to find that combination of southern charm and determination that characterized June Carter. (Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Witherspoon was raised primarily in Nashville, was a child model and scored at the age of 14 as the child of battling parents in the little-seen “The Man In The Moon.)”

Although Cash desperately needed the tough love Carter gave him to overcome his addiction, the relationship was not one-sided. A child of the singing Carter Family, known as the “first family of country music” for decades, Carter had no confidence in her own singing ability until Cash came along.

“Walk The Line” is also strengthened by some fine supporting performances from Robert Patrick as Cash’s father, who is allowed to become more than a stick figure in later scenes, Vivian Liberto as Cash’s long-suffering first wife, Sandra Ellis Lafferty as June’s mother, Maybelle and Waylon Malloy Payne, who gives a dead-on portrayal of bad-boy Jerry Lee Lewis.

The script by Mangold and Gil Dennis is serviceable and may suffer from Cash’s required approval and involvement in the production until his recent death. Remarkably, the same situation existed with The Ray Charles film with Charles passing away just before the film was completed.

The inability to edit big budget films to under two hours is an increasing problem. 20 minutes could easily have been lopped off the 136 minute running time. As with “Ray,” however, the story is so strong, the weaknesses are overcome.

Driving through Texas on one of those grinding one-night-stand tours, Lewis, who at one point had studied to become a preacher, says, “You know where we’re headed don’t you?” When the response is the next town, Lewis replies, “We’re all going to hell for the songs we play.”

Many in the tour group died young, or like Lewis, wound up spending their later years sick and broke. The movie ends in 1968 at Folsom prison, but Cash went on to greatness for another 30 years and, as corny as it sounds, could thank the love of a good woman.

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