Cherry (2021) | Film Review

Cherry stars Tom Holland as the titular character, a young man struggling to find his place in the world, who signs up for the military, gets hitched to Emily (Ciara Bravo), ships off to Iraq where he really sees some shit, comes back stateside with a healthy dose of PTSD and a drug habit, burns through all of their finances, and ultimately decides to rob banks in order to pay for the aforementioned drug habit. If that premise sounds a bit like smacking your head against a 2×4, then you’ve come to the right dojo.

Joe and Anthony Russo follow-up their magnum opus of cinematic godliness (Avengers: Endgame) with this next directorial effort, and the apple could not have fallen farther from the tree. Where Endgame felt like a boldly realized vision of complex narratives, Cherry comes across as ideas tossed randomly at a dartboard on $.25 wings night. The story kicks off near the end with Cherry robbing a bank before jerking us all the way back to the beginning to start all over again, like so many episodes of any mundane CBS procedural.  For a film well over a two-hour runtime, all this extra padding is atrociously felt.

It is not that the story isn’t intriguing, there are many moments where aspects of Cherry’s life are endlessly fascinating (the atrocities of war, the almost comical mishandlings of the robberies, the tragedy that leads to Emily’s drug addiction), it’s that there is just simply too much going on and the script is completely high as a kite. Portions of that are directly related to the filmmakers attempts to invoke Cherry’s own mission as an unreliable narrator – Holland breaks the 4^th wall so often and unnecessarily it’s like Ferris Bueller on a bender – yet much more revolves around this convoluted script that regurgitates and repeats multiple plotlines and themes to dizzying effect. Cherry is never hard to follow, but it is difficult to care where we’re going.

Performance wise, Cherry is far less a compliment to Tom Holland’s “I’m not just Spider-Man” non-Marvel films than The Devil All the Time was. There, Holland pulled serious punches in numerous scenes as he wrestled with more than a few personal demons. In Cherry, Holland holds his own, until a scene calls for Cherry to act tough or carry a hint of swagger; these moments simply do not work, and instead play as though we’re watching a TikTok video of Holland rehearsing FOR these scenes behind the camera. Don’t even get me started on how ridiculously absurd it is for Cherry to never wear a mask for these robberies, continuously flaunting his babyish cheekbones for the world’s authorities to see.

Production wise, Cherry is a beautifully shot film, cinematically gorgeous (the cinematography from Newton Thomas Sigel is worthy of mention). The Russo’s continue to prove that they have an eye for action sequences, as even the most mundane bank robbery is thrilling to watch. Regardless of how easy Cherry should be to catch, as he is obviously no Scarface, these and the Iraq set-pieces glide seamlessly in front of our eyes. They are utterly delicious visuals. It is only when the action stops and the drama creeps back in that Cherry struggles to find its footing.

Overall, this is a film that feels as though it was shelved in the ‘90s and is only just now finding the light of day. A beautifully shot and (mostly) well-acted tale, but an overstuffed and flawed script does it no favors and ultimately leads to a film that is easily 30 minutes too long. This Cherry is far from ripe.

Follow our further discussion on Cherry via this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: