Everybody's talking. There's been so much chatter, so much celebrity gossip advancing the release of this one that I feel obligated to tell you first what it isn't.

Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon is June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line." Click photo for larger image. "Walk the Line" Rating: PG-13 for some language, thematic material and depiction of drug dependency. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon. Director: James Mangold. "Walk the Line" Web site

"Walk the Line" isn't a biography of the fiery career of rock 'n' roll innovator and country legend Johnny Cash. It's not about the birth of rock or superstar drug abuse or even a public window into the private soul of Joaquin Phoenix.

Instead, co-writer and director James Mangold held his frame over a fabulous real-life love story. Leave your preconceptions at the door: "Walk the Line" is about how a seriously flawed guy got a really great woman.

To get there, Mangold connected only those points that influenced Cash's strained and splintered relationship with former child star June Carter. The Million Dollar Sessions at Sun Studio with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins? The stars are there but not the jam. The legendary "pacing animal" concert where he stomped out the stage lights at the Grand Ole Opry? Merely mentioned. How about Cash's mid-career clash with the Nashville Establishment and his triumphant return as the Grammy-winning elder statesman of Americana art? "Walk the Line" ends in 1968, soon after the object of Cash's obsession finally says "yes" -- on stage -- to his umpteenth proposal. Leaving out some of the high-water marks of Cash's career wasn't an oversight. Mangold is trying to tell a different, far deeper story.

	Joaquin Phoenix nails trademark mannerisms of country legend Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line." Click photo for larger image.

For all that "Walk the Line" isn't, here's what it is: brooding, pensive, slow, self-destructively self-absorbed and threatening to explode with untapped creative possibilities. Halfway through a film based on Cash's autobiographies, I realized that the movie and the man share exactly the same flaws. If the director of "Cop Land," "Identity" and "Girl, Interrupted" intentionally made that connection, he's a creative genius who deserves more stars than I gave him. If it was just a lucky coincidence, Mangold ought to drop a star in an envelope and have his people send it to my people at this address.

As celebrity biopics go, "Walk the Line" seems to walk the line on historical accuracy. Busting the mythology of "the man in black," the story correctly recounts the origin of Cash's dark costume and gets the milestones of his life in the right order. That attention to detail leads me to trust the validity of other details. A key scene happens in and around Wheeling's Capitol Music Hall, and the songwriting moments are a treat: Cash struggles to reinterpret an old prison movie and studies the rhythm of the shoe shiners' rags; Carter scolds a finagling Cash, "You can't walk no line," and moans that her passion "burns, it burns." It's also one of the few music industry movies where the nay-saying label executive is right. Dallas Roberts plays a cold and blunt Sam Phillips, who tells young Cash that his gospel covers are boring and he should dig deeper.

Granted, Phoenix looks nothing like Cash -- even the facial scar's in the wrong place. But he nails Cash's trademark mannerisms and does a fair job of singing his classic songs in something bordering a baritone. What Phoenix gets completely right, however, is the caged animal attitude, the pressure-cooker personality that affected every aspect of Cash's life.

Reese Witherspoon sings Carter's songs, but it may have been easier for her to capture Carter's perky but sincere public persona. The country entertainer's private side, however, was far more complex, and Witherspoon follows the lead of Mangold's script, walking the line that divided Carter's devout Christian beliefs from the burning ring of fire she felt for her best friend, a troubled, sensitive bad boy with so many possibilities.