Tom Holland and Zendaya, other than their “Spider-Man” roots, share one commonality: They’re trying to shed their Disney roots for more mature roles befitting their age. Zendaya, for instance, not only plays a darker role on “Euphoria,” but also produced “Malcolm & Marie” and is slated to star in “Dune.” On the other hand, Holland showed some promise in “The Devil All the Time,” but hasn’t quite proven his ability to undertake the same aching roles as Zendaya. Based on Nico Walker’s same-titled novel, his latest film, “Cherry,” is directed by the Russo Brothers and tells the story of an Ohio teenager who enlists in the army as a medic only to return home from the Iraq War with PTSD and an opioid habit.
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Set in the Rust Belt, “Cherry” is a lot of movie; five chapters are, among genres, war film, a heist flick, and a dark romance. Opening with the teenager meeting his high-school sweetheart Emily (Ciara Bravo), then unfurling their marriage in a series of chapters, it’s a Syd and Nancy codependency that’s as much about drugs as it is about their addiction to each other. The Russo Brothers use the couple’s relationship to tell a story about the opioid crisis afflicting places like Ohio. But so much of this absurdist dark war drama is too myopic to explain the region’s public health emergency truthfully. Rather, the Russo Brothers’ “Cherry” is an earnest star-vehicle that falls short of both its star and its story.
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“Cherry” is composed of tonally incongruous chapters that often confuse rather than explain its central character. And the Russo Brothers over-stylize nearly every minute of their film. From Cherry’s first doe-eyed meeting of Emily to the drama’s final healing minutes. The filmmakers use soft lenses, muted colors, harsh color-grading, POV and bird’s eye view shots, fourth-wall breaks, and split screens to transition from the innocence of Cherry’s teenage years to the horrors of war. A transition that struggles to translate.
The same critique can be levied at the raunchy dialogue. When Cherry joins the army, he’s inundated by the toxic masculinity of his fellow soldiers. Drill sergeants routinely threaten to punch him in the crotch. Others say he has a “dick with ears.” It’s as though the Russo brothers played “Full Metal Jacket” on repeat, but never grasped how that film’s dialogue worked. What the absurdity of R Lee Emery’s dress-downs tried to impart—how the military dehumanizes for the purposes of creating fighting machines.
Even when applied to the Iraq War battle sequences, the film isn’t as immersive as one would think, which is odd because Cherry is a medic. The scenes are actually quite cold, and the carnage comes off as hollow. Rather than allowing the desert warfront horrors to manifest themselves visually, the Russo brother are insistent on using voiceover to narrate what Cherry is seeing, such as him describing a dying soldier who has the look of “lizard brain” on his face.
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Nearly the entire first hour is not very well-considered. In fact, one could make the case that the picture doesn’t begin until Cherry arrives home from war because it’s the opioid crisis in the rust belt that’s the true story. Whereas the events leading up to his arrival home, while important, could be truncated so this drama isn’t so overlong (it’s 2.5 hours and feels at least that long).
The relationship between Cherry and Emily, and how they descend into junkie madness, is the only narrative component that works. When Cherry returns to Ohio, he finds Emily working a steady job as a school teacher. He, on the other hand, spends much of his nights suffering from PTSD. To cope, he self-medicates with heroin. To be closer to him, Emily joins him in taking the drug too. On its face, their relationship is less Syd than Nancy, and more addict and dealer. Emily is just as addicted to Cherry, as she is to the drugs. But Holland and Bravo do show genuine affection for one another that goes beyond the film’s hazy highs. And they inject some real heart into a relationship that’s written superficially.
Holland as a bank robber, however, is on far shakier ground. To support his and Emily’s drug habit, Cherry decides to become a bank robber, and funnel his earnings to his dudebro dealer Pills and Coke (Jack Reynor). This is another conscious shedding, much like “The Devil All the Time,” of his nice-guy charm. However, the darker places a role like Cherry should take Holland still feel out of reach for the MCU-star. Cherry is a broken character, but Holland, even when adorned in scabs and junkie sweats, doesn’t wear brokenness well. Rather he plays it as though he’s only read about aching, but never felt it.
Outside of Cherry, the film lacks fully realized characters. Supporting players, often Black folks, are either enveloped in shadows or have a gun pointed in their faces. The women are even less regarded. Cherry’s first high school girlfriend, Madison, is slut-shamed and never seen on screen again. Even Emily is at first depicted as a prize (she literally wears a bow around her neck) but then descends into dependent junkie madness. Part of this is because Cherry first meets these women when he’s a teen, but he doesn’t become any less myopic as an adult.
The Russo brothers, in a different way, are also myopic. We never see the opioid crisis inflicting the Rust Belt beyond Cherry’s ridiculous lens. Rather caricatures like Black—a dangerous drug dealer—and Pills, a double-popped collar dude-bro dealer associated with Black, are outlandish but never felt. Because this drama gawks at all of its characters, and uses their plight as fodder for a supposed art. Strains of classical music, for instance, accompany their highs. But the tragic emotion underneath the grandeur doesn’t trickle down to a granular level.
There’s a great film waiting to be made about the opioid crisis. But much like “Hillbilly Elegy,” “Cherry” can’t conjure up the cause and the toll of the devastation without relying on pastiche. Even the ending, meant to be a moment of healing, reduces Cherry’s concluding journey to a mere saccharine montage.
If the Russo brothers are totally interested in the opioid crisis, shouldn’t the aftermath of addiction have a foothold as the absurdist flashy war sequences or the gawking scenes of drug-taking? These stories need less Hollywood, and more clear-eyed recognition of the real people at the heart of this crisis. As for Russo brothers’ “Cherry,” it doesn’t succeed as a war film, as a heist flick, or the star vehicle it so craves to be for Holland. It’s just average at its core. [C]
