WALK THE LINE (2005). Sometimes all it takes to get a life right is a well-executed framing device and flashback. James Mangold's movie opens with hundreds of Folsom Prison inmates pounding their feet along with Johnny Cash's band. The singer (Joaquin Phoenix) takes a break in the woodshop, pondering a buzzsaw. Time backs up 24 years to 1944, when 11-year-old Cash's saintly older brother Jack is accidentally laid open by the same kind of blade. Cash's guilt at this death permeates all that follows, driving him to hell and redemption. He tours the country with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley and fuels the fire with booze and pills. Formidable figures check his anarchy: his wife (Ginnifer Goodwin) gives him four daughters and endless grief; his father (Robert Patrick) delights in putting him down. The wife departs, but dad is inescapable, returning to every holiday dinner like Banquo's ghost to remind him that all he's done is "nothin.' " Mostly, though, what makes him walk the line is his "angel" June Carter. Reese Witherspoon captures Carter's frantic ebullience as a mini Minnie Pearl unsure of her talent and anxious about being a single mom in a shaky profession stalked by a besotted beneficiary. And Phoenix's performance transcends mimicry. He transforms himself, as did Cash, from a whimpering chaos of need, grief, and talent into the black-clad subterranean voice that tames the savage breasts of Folsom prison and wins the heart of the woman he loves. (136m)

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