Spiderman does heroin and robs banks.
Directed by the Russo Brothers and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name, written by Nico Walker while he was in prison serving his sentence for robbing banks. Cherry is set in the years following 9/11 and follows a narrator in his early twenties that decides to join the military after he and his girlfriend break up. He gets shipped out to Iraq and experiences many atrocities that leave him with PTSD. After he returns he gets back together with his girlfriend, Emily, and the two get married. But the narrator has a difficult time readjusting to regular life so he starts abusing prescription pills and this quickly escalates to both him and Emily becoming full blown dope addicts. Low on money the narrator decides to start robbing banks to fund his addiction.
Cherry had a lot of buzz during its early production. The book had been a massive hit, lauded as the first great piece of writing about the opioid epidemic. And the drug use is one aspect that the film tackles quite well. There are scenes where the narrator gets high and we see the jubilance of drug use but later on in the film the narrator and Emily take drugs for maintenance more than pleasure. The character’s appearance also changes as their addiction grows. By the end of the film Tom Holland’s face is sunken and drawn out with scabs along his temples.
Speaking of Tom Holland he was the major draw of this movie. This was seen as and attempt to pull him away from his Spiderman persona and transition into something more serious. He’s tried to do this several times actually, most recently with the Netflix movie The Devil All the Time which was a good movie but went somewhat forgotten. Holland’s innate likability which is such an asset in the Spiderman movies is detrimental in movies like this where we’re supposed to see him as a degenerate.
Holland and Ciara Bravo ,who plays Emily, do well in their roles. You can believe them as two outcasts that find refuge in each other but there is something in their doomed romance that rings hollow. I think it might be the fact that we really never learn anything about these characters despite being with them for the majority of this movie’s nearly 2 and a half hour runtime (which is egregiously long by the way). All that we know about the narrator character is that he has PTSD from the war and he is a drug addict. These are important character traits for sure but when that’s all that you know about a character it’s hard to connect with them. In the book a big deal is made about the narrator wanting to be a medic but in the movie that point is blown over fairly quickly.
Bravo does her best with the character of Emily but there really isn’t anything there to work with. I think the character is meant to be a fantasized version of herself as seen through the narrator’s eyes but that just ends up making Emily painfully boring, the most interesting thing she does in the movie is OD.
The supporting cast isn’t much better. The narrator names a bunch of his friends from college and some guys from his unit in Iraq but we never really learn enough about any of these characters to care about what happens to them. Even the narrator’s best friend in the war Jimenez who’s death is meant to be a major contributor to the narrator’s PTSD only gets a few minutes of backstory about a pregnant girlfriend at home. There is one character that did intrigue me, Black, the mysterious drug kingpin that rolls around the neighborhood in a black crown vic. We only ever get glimpses of this large imposing figure with a face full of tattoos and a deep gravelly voice. He seemed like he would be the big bad of this story but he just fades out of the story without making much of an impact.
I think this movie’s issue is that it’s come out a few years too late. Not to say that drug addiction and PTSD are not topics that are still prevalent today, they certainly are, but interest in movies about the Iraq war has plummeted. In the late 2000s and early 2010s the market was flooded with war movies and I think as an audience we’re kind of over it. Another thing that makes this movie feel like it would fit in better in the 2000s is the over use of stylistic effects. This movie is chalk full of quick cuts and high concept scenes one of which involves seeing inside of a rectum. It is somewhat reminiscent of early Guy Riche movies but with much less character.
Another thing that people were saying about this movie is how graphic and extreme some of the stuff in it was. I might be desensitized to movie violence at this point but I didn’t think that any of the violence in the war scenes were any more sever than any Michael Bay action movie, and the drug use is tame compared to a movie like Requiem For A Dream or even Breaking Bad for that matter.
I have to mention the ending so if you don’t want this movie spoiled for you you can stop reading now. The narrator ends up in prison, and while there we see a montage where he gets clean starts attending meetings. He grows a 70s porn star moustache and starts educating himself and probably starts writing the book Cherry. He eventually gets let out after several years and who is waiting for him, Emily, who looks like she’s gotten herself clean as well. And the movie ends on a very hopeful note that goes against the bleakness that we have been watching for 2 hours prior. I can’t help wonder if this movie would have been more interesting if the totality of the movie happened in the first 30 mins and the rest of the film was about the narrator kicking his addiction and turning his life around?
Too bad that isn’t the movie we got. In reality we got a movie about a lot of important issues that doesn’t feel all that important. The characters, although well acted by the two leads, are pretty shallow and not very well written. The directing seems more interested in coming off as stylistic than actually enhancing the story. This movie isn’t awful by any stretch but it is disappointing that Tom Holland has yet again struck out in trying to pull away from the Marvel machine. So many actors have failed to make that transition and it looks like Holland might be another to add to that list.
Here’s hoping that the Uncharted movie is something special because I highly doubt that Chaos Walking is gonna be the one to do it. As for Cherry, I think this was a movie with potential, not a tremendous amount of potential but some, and much like the characters in this film it never really lived up to any of that potential. I will give Cherry a 2.5 out of 5 stars.
