Cherry
Year: 2021
Director: Anthony & Joe Russo
Starring: Ciara Bravo & Tom Holland
Runtime: 141 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 17/03/21
Director: Anthony & Joe Russo
Starring: Ciara Bravo & Tom Holland
Runtime: 141 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 17/03/21
If you’ve read my review of Dickinson you’ll know that I already stated that Apple TV+ is a little short on content to justify a subscription right now and that case is made even more evident when you check out how many films the service has. Struggling to even hit double digits, Apple TV+’s film collection is so paltry that you’d be forgiven for not knowing it even offered any. But Cherry is the first major film for the streaming platform and something they’ve been promoting very hard for quite some time now. I checked out the trailer a couple of weeks back and I got pretty hyped for it, but now I’ve seen it and whilst I did enjoy Cherry, I can’t help but feel that the trailer didn’t properly sell what the film was about.
It is 2002 and Cherry (Tom Holland) is a college student who falls in love with classmate Emily (Ciara Bravo). The pair share a brief but intense romance until Emily reveals she will be moving to Canada and so must end their relationship. In frustration Cherry enlists himself to the U.S. Army in the hopes of finding purpose in his life by serving his country in the still relatively new war on terror in Iraq.
After boot camp he is drafted to Iraq as a medic where he provides medical attention to dozens of his mortally wounded fellow soldiers. This takes an immense psychological toll on him and when he returns two years later, he is diagnosed with PTSD. He reunites with Emily and after struggling to cope with his psychological problems the two become addicted to heroin, landing them in serious debt. To try and pay off the money he owes, and continue to fund the pairs heroin addiction, Cherry turns to bank robbery and moves deeper into an inescapable life of crime.
It is 2002 and Cherry (Tom Holland) is a college student who falls in love with classmate Emily (Ciara Bravo). The pair share a brief but intense romance until Emily reveals she will be moving to Canada and so must end their relationship. In frustration Cherry enlists himself to the U.S. Army in the hopes of finding purpose in his life by serving his country in the still relatively new war on terror in Iraq.
After boot camp he is drafted to Iraq as a medic where he provides medical attention to dozens of his mortally wounded fellow soldiers. This takes an immense psychological toll on him and when he returns two years later, he is diagnosed with PTSD. He reunites with Emily and after struggling to cope with his psychological problems the two become addicted to heroin, landing them in serious debt. To try and pay off the money he owes, and continue to fund the pairs heroin addiction, Cherry turns to bank robbery and moves deeper into an inescapable life of crime.
Based off the trailer for Cherry I was expecting something like Jarhead meets Silver Linings Playbook, but what I watched more closely resembled the depressing parts of Forrest Gump meets Trainspotting. I wasn’t aware that the film was based on a semi-autobiographical book either, so I guess that makes sense for the more downbeat tone considering it is somewhat based on real events. In fact, the trailer depicts only a fleeting glimpse of any kind of drug use, I even completely missed it the first time I watched trailer so when in the second half of the film Cherry & Emily are full blown heroin addicts it caught me off guard. It’s so central to the story, and such a large portion of the film centres around it that I’m surprised the trailer didn’t convey that better. I've left the trailer at the bottom of the review so check it out for yourself, see whether it's just me that completely missed the point.
The story to Cherry is gripping though and most of that comes down to Tom Holland’s incredible performance. I’ve personally not seen him in anything outside of Spider-Man and whilst I love his performance as Peter Parker, I was intrigued to see how he would handle a more dramatic focused role. Long story short, he’s fantastic. With Cherry he is able to balance that comedic timing he showcases so well in Spider-Man but with a much grittier and depressing tone. I think it also helps that Cherry is directed by The Russo Brothers, who of course have worked very closely with Tom on three of the Marvel films. They are already familiar with what he is capable of, and how they can push him to get something more.
Ciara Bravo is also very good as Emily, but I have a problem with how her character does fall into the manic pixie dream girl trope of being emotionally unavailable, but completely irresistible to the male protagonist because she’s hot and will solve his problems. That problem solving aspect does get flipped on its head slightly by the fact that she doesn’t necessarily fix the problem, but she instead allows herself to be consumed by it. Either way though, she doesn’t really do very much. She simply exists to be an emotional catalyst for Cherry. The scenes where she isn’t around are almost devoid of emotion, which considering the kind of story it is works well, but it then becomes such a waste that she doesn’t have more agency in the story.
The story to Cherry is gripping though and most of that comes down to Tom Holland’s incredible performance. I’ve personally not seen him in anything outside of Spider-Man and whilst I love his performance as Peter Parker, I was intrigued to see how he would handle a more dramatic focused role. Long story short, he’s fantastic. With Cherry he is able to balance that comedic timing he showcases so well in Spider-Man but with a much grittier and depressing tone. I think it also helps that Cherry is directed by The Russo Brothers, who of course have worked very closely with Tom on three of the Marvel films. They are already familiar with what he is capable of, and how they can push him to get something more.
Ciara Bravo is also very good as Emily, but I have a problem with how her character does fall into the manic pixie dream girl trope of being emotionally unavailable, but completely irresistible to the male protagonist because she’s hot and will solve his problems. That problem solving aspect does get flipped on its head slightly by the fact that she doesn’t necessarily fix the problem, but she instead allows herself to be consumed by it. Either way though, she doesn’t really do very much. She simply exists to be an emotional catalyst for Cherry. The scenes where she isn’t around are almost devoid of emotion, which considering the kind of story it is works well, but it then becomes such a waste that she doesn’t have more agency in the story.
It also feels a little long. The film comes in at two hours and twenty minutes, when I feel like it could have been trimmed down to a two-hour affair quite easily. The real meat of the story is in the first half of the film where we are introduced to the characters, and see what happens to Cherry whilst he is at war. Once the film begins to shift gears into the bank robbery stuff the pace starts to slow down, and though it’s never boring I did often find myself wondering just how much longer I had left of the film because the story started to become more concerned about the logistics of drug use and money management.
I thought the Russo’s did a fantastic job of making the film look good though. The framing, the interesting use of colour to reflect Cherry’s emotional state, the great use of shifting aspect ratios. Holland narrates most of the film and the dialogue for it is really good, almost poetic at times. I also loved searching the background for the names of the banks Cherry robs, they've all got fantastic names and were a great laugh whenever I found them. In terms of craft, aside from being slightly too long Cherry is very well made and the majority of the enjoyment I got from the film was from how it looked, rather than what it contained.
Cherry is certainly worth checking out for Holland’s performance alone, but is it worth subscribing to Apple TV+ for? Like in the case of Dickinson, not really. Perhaps my opinion of the film would be more glowing if I knew what I was getting myself into, but I definitely feel as though it’s a case of Apple not being comfortable marketing a film about drug abuse, or whoever was in charge of making the trailer didn’t actually know what the film was about. Cherry is flawed, but still enjoyable. It’s just a shame that it’ll likely get ignored by the majority of people as it’s exclusive to Apple’s streaming service.
I thought the Russo’s did a fantastic job of making the film look good though. The framing, the interesting use of colour to reflect Cherry’s emotional state, the great use of shifting aspect ratios. Holland narrates most of the film and the dialogue for it is really good, almost poetic at times. I also loved searching the background for the names of the banks Cherry robs, they've all got fantastic names and were a great laugh whenever I found them. In terms of craft, aside from being slightly too long Cherry is very well made and the majority of the enjoyment I got from the film was from how it looked, rather than what it contained.
Cherry is certainly worth checking out for Holland’s performance alone, but is it worth subscribing to Apple TV+ for? Like in the case of Dickinson, not really. Perhaps my opinion of the film would be more glowing if I knew what I was getting myself into, but I definitely feel as though it’s a case of Apple not being comfortable marketing a film about drug abuse, or whoever was in charge of making the trailer didn’t actually know what the film was about. Cherry is flawed, but still enjoyable. It’s just a shame that it’ll likely get ignored by the majority of people as it’s exclusive to Apple’s streaming service.