Walk the Line [Original Soundtrack]

1	Get Rhythm / Joaquin Phoenix 2:26
2	I Walk the Line / Joaquin Phoenix 3:20
3	Wildwood Flower / Reese Witherspoon 2:31
4	Lewis Boogie / Waylon Payne 2:01
5	Ring of Fire / Joaquin Phoenix 3:42
6	You're My Baby / Johnathan Rice 2:12
7	Cry Cry Cry / Joaquin Phoenix 2:35
8	Folsom Prison Blues / Joaquin Phoenix 2:52
9	That's All Right / Tyler Hilton 1:46
10	Juke Box Blues / Reese Witherspoon 2:15
11	It Ain't Me Babe / Reese Witherspoon 3:05
12	Home of the Blues / Joaquin Phoenix 2:40
13	Milk Cow Blues / Tyler Hilton 2:19
14	I'm a Long Way from Home / Shooter Jennings 2:15
15	Cocaine Blues / Joaquin Phoenix 2:50
16	Jackson / Reese Witherspoon 5:21

Barnes & Noble

As a memento of a marvelous movie with inspired performances, the soundtrack to the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line gets two thumbs up. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, starring as Johnny Cash and June Carter, carry the load, singing their own vocals, as do Waylon Payne (as Jerry Lee Lewis), Tyler Hilton (as Elvis Presley), and Shooter Jennings (as his dad, Waylon), in mostly laudable performances. Phoenix and Witherspoon are steady and true to the originals -- Phoenix does his best work on the up-tempo numbers, such as "Get Rhythm," "Cry Cry Cry," "Cocaine Blues," and, especially, "Ring of Fire," which is the one number that seems to engage him most deeply as drama and as music. Witherspoon's version of "Wildwood Flower" is rather flat emotionally, but the western swing bounce of "Juke Box Blues" inspires an engaging, perky vocal, and she and Phoenix find their own fire in such duets as "It Ain't Me Babe" and the rousing "Jackson." Payne does an okay job in channeling the Killer's cocksure attitude on "Lewis Boogie," whereas Hilton's Elvis Presley, on "That's All Right" and "Milk Cow Blues," from the Sun era, is feisty but a tad tepid in execution. Unsurprisingly, Shooter Jennings, far and away the most talented of the authentic musicians on this disc, stands out with a gritty, bluesy rendition of his dad's take on a Hank Cochran–penned tear-jerker, "I'm a Long Way from Home." As a bonus, this enhanced CD features two scenes cut from the movie, one of Phoenix performing "Rock 'n' Roll Ruby," another of a dynamic Phoenix/Witherspoon set-to on "Jackson," so rich in musical energy and so subtle but telling in body language that you wish the filmmakers would have found room for the entire galvanizing performance. David McGee

All Music Guide

For Walk the Line, his biopic of country legend Johnny Cash, director James Mangold took a different tactic than director Taylor Hackford did with his Ray Charles bio, Ray. Where Hackford used Charles' classic original recordings for Atlantic as the heart of the film, Mangold decided to use new recordings for his movie, hiring producer T-Bone Burnett, the mastermind behind the surprise soundtrack success of the Coen Brothers' old-timey O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to steer his cast through re-creations of the classic Sun sound. Burnett skillfully conjures that lean, muscular, mysterious sound for his Walk the Line work, keeping all the performances direct and unadorned -- "Ring of Fire" even has its mariachi horns stripped from it -- and hiring a bunch of pros, including Sun vet Jack Clement, as the backing band. All this means that on a pure sonic level, Walk the Line is quite successful, but as a soundtrack album, it's still a bit of a disconcerting listen because it is, after all, actors singing as part of their performance. Listening to Joaquin Phoenix sing Johnny Cash's words and Reese Witherspoon sing as June Carter, it's hard not to shake the feeling that their on-record performances are part of a greater scheme that is impossible to discern without the film as a whole. That said, both Phoenix and Witherspoon give serious, sincere performances that are quite effective, particularly when they're supported by Burnette's crackerjack production. Strangely enough, it's the cameos from the other musicians featured in the film that ring a discordant note: Tyler Hilton's Elvis Presley and, especially, Waylon Malloy Payne's cartoonish Jerry Lee Lewis are too close to caricatures to be effective, while Shooter Jennings' "I'm a Long Way from Home" and Johnathan Rice's "You're My Baby" (which regrettably drops the "little wooly booger" from Cash's original tune) are just a shade too modern in their approach to fit comfortably among the earnest, faithful re-creations that surround them. So, Walk the Line winds up being a curious yet enjoyable listen. By no means does this replace the Cash or Carter originals, but it's a good tribute to both musicians, while providing some fascinating insight to the art and craft of Phoenix and Witherspoon as actors. Stephen Thomas Erlewine