TALKIN' THE TALK Hey, back again. It's been a busy time of the year for me with the new job and the holidays, but my New Year's resolution is to see and write about a lot more films. On to the review!

Saw Walk the Line with Viv a few weeks ago in Evanston.

Apparently, this is the story of Johnny Cash's life: He had a mean old Daddy whom he could never please, especially after a tragic incident involving the death of his older brother. Then, years later he joined the Air Force where he spent his time messing around with a guitar. This was thoughtful of him, as he was going to become a country music star in the future. Then he came home to the U.S. and married his high school sweetheart who turned out to be the most godawful, ballbreaking shrew that ever lived. He messed around with guitar some more and then auditioned for Sam Phillips of Sun Records. Sam liked what he heard and soon Johnny was on the road with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. (Hey, they're famous! You've heard of them!) More importantly, Johnny was on the road with June Carter of the singing Carter family. Johnny was sweet on June, but they were both married and she didn't much care for him anyway, with his weird, uncouth ways.

Well, Johnny started to make it big, but he wasn't very happy because his sourpuss wife still took every chance she could to kick him in the nads. So, he started doing drugs, which, shockingly, only caused his life to unravel that much more quickly. His wife left him and took the kids, wouldn't you know. It gets to the point where you're thinking, "If only something could save Johnny, you know, like the love of a good woman." Well, thankfully, there is a good woman that can save Johnny, June Carter! She seems to hang around in the background of Johnny's life a lot, so she's there to help him straighten himself out. She and her parents even come over to Johnny's place for Thanksgiving and Johnny finally confronts his Scrooge-like father. Then Johnny and June go play a concert at Folsom prison because Johnny's felt like a prisoner his whole life. There's even a saw at the prison just like the one that killed his brother! The Circle of Life! After Johnny's prison liberation, he proposes to June at a concert. She finally says yes and the end-titles tell us that they lived happily ever after.

I wish that I could say that I was exaggerating the small-mindedness of the screenplay for Walk the Line, but, alas, I'm not. It really was that schematic and formulaic. I can't quite understand why anyone would want to be involved ina project like this: taking the life and work of one of America's greatest popular musicians and reducing it to the stuff of a bad T.V. movie of the week.

So many of the characters feel like cardboard cut-outs. The stern, distant father who only serves to provide a CONFLICT in Johnny's life. The misery-inducing first wife who would even convince the Pope of the necessity of divorce. The cameos by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Waylon Jennings whose only purpose seems to be to make the viewer feel good about him or herself for recognizing them.

There are some good things about Walk the Line, the things that Hollywood does well now. The production deign and the actors. The hair, the clothes, and the sets all look period perfect, especially the scenes in and around 50s and 60s Vegas.

The actors are good too, expecially Joaquin Phoenix. He does a good job of fleshing out the script's thin characterization of Johnny Cash, so well indeed that you're almost tempted to buy its inanities. His brooding, tortured Cash suggests someone much more complicated than the one we see in the film, it's as if the film-makers forgot to provide him with the necessary lines to express himself, which, I suppose, they did. The overall effect of Phoenix's performance is a little jarring; it's as if a character from a Dostoevsky novel has wandered into a soap opera.  ¶ 11:09 AM