"Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s going to happen. And it’s a nightmare."
Director: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo
Where Available: Apple TV+
Starring: Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor, Jeff Wahlberg, Forrest Goodluck,
Rating:
The best way to describe Cherry is when you read a piece of literature in English class and your teacher over-analyzes EVERY SINGLE LINE until nothing has its original meaning and everything is somehow a metaphor. The Russo Brothers are that English teacher reading Cherry by Nico Walker to their class.
Cherry drifts from college dropout to army medic in Iraq - anchored only by his true love, Emily. But after returning from the war with PTSD, his life spirals into drugs and crime as he struggles to find his place in the world.
I wanted to like this movie really badly. I wanted to come out the other end saying that all the critics were wrong and that the Russo brothers did a great job on their first big non-Avengers film. I am unable to say those things now having watched Cherry.
Tom Holland plays the hell out of this role! Cherry is a big step away from the roles we are used to seeing Tom Holland in, like Spider-Man. The Russo Brothers are used to working with Tom Holland, but I just do not think they were right for this project. If Tom's talent was put into better hands, it could have been better. The same goes for Ciara Bravo. SHE DID THAT! For those of you who weren't Big Time Rush fans in 2010, Bravo played Kendall Knights little sister Katie. Since then, I have not heard nor seen anything about her, until Cherry. She delivers such an honest and heartbreaking performance beside Tom Holland. They both make the movie worth the watch, and I wish that their characters were put into better hands.
The structure of events in Cherry was its weakest aspect. The film is split into 7 parts: Prologue, Part One: "When life was beginning, I saw you", Part Two: Basic, Part Three: Cherry, Part Four: Home, Part Five: Dope Life, and Epilogue. The script is based off a book written by Nico Walker while he was serving time in prison. He pretty much documents his entire life in this book, and the movie does the same. It goes from college to army to being addicted to drugs, but then there is the Prologue and Epilogue. The Prologue is a spoiler to what happens in Part Five in an attempt to make you watch all the way until that point, but it is completely unnecessary. The Epilogue is even worse. Cherry should have ended after Part Five. Not that I don't want Cherry to end happy, but the Epliogue caps off the movie in a way that makes it seem like everything is alright and that love is stronger than anything. It wasn't the ending that I expected and was definitely not what the movie needed.
Visually, Cherry is a beautiful movie, but the Russo Brothers don't make it work for the subject matter. At some points, the visuals were too much and the story was overlooked just to get one pretty shot. Overall, Cherry is not the movie I expected it to be. I do not think I will be recommending it to anyone other than Tom Holland fans because Bravo and him are the only reasons this is truly worth watching.
Quotes:
"Can you look back to when you met the one you love the most, and remember exactly how it was? Not as in where you were, or what she was wearing. But rather in what you saw in her that made you say, “Yes, this is what I came here for.”
"Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s going to happen. And it’s a nightmare."
"I’m twenty-three years-old, and I still don’t understand what it is that people do. It’s as if all of this were built on nothing, and nothing were holding all this together."
Comments