Review: Cherry

 

Hi, Everybody! Today, I reviewed Cherry, an Apple Original Film that is now streaming today! From playing our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to playing heroin addict, Nico Walker, Tom Holland has proven to be a capable and versatile actor, proving himself to be a mature performer. 

Cherry stars Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor, Michael Rispoli, Jeff Wahlberg, Forrest Goodluck, Michael Gandolfini and Kyle Harvey and is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and is based on Nico's book of the same name.

The movie follows the life of Nico Walker, a young man who enlists in the army and afterwards gets addicted to opioids due to his PTSD and robs banks to cope with his addiction. 

Now, both Joe and Anthony have become well-known directing movies within the MCU like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame and they both chose to direct and produce a biographical drama, which I won't argue against since that they are respectable directors but their direction in this movie feels very off. They tried to make the film very flashy by incorporating blurred backgrounds and it was very distracting, which ultimately doesn't make Nico's story interesting at all. There's also one scene that I thought was shocking and very weird. When Nico enlists in the army, he gets a rectal exam and what's seen is the inside of a very dark and pink hole and then you realize that there's a camera inside someone's butthole. 

The big gripe I have with this movie is Tom Holland's narration, I can definitely see the GoodFellas influence, but it was bit in your face, on the nose and super explanatory, including lazy characterization that tried to be interesting. 

What I really liked about Cherry was Tom Holland's performance, which makes the movie very watchable and a decent viewing experience even if it's ambitious storytelling didn't really pay off. Well, I mean there's not really much of a story. You have a college student who falls in love, then he enlists, has PTSD and then becomes an opioid addict and a bank robber with a very bloated runtime of 2 and a half hours. It attempted to approach the themes of veteran mistreatment, but it's never discussed. 

I didn't even know what I was watching. Was it a romance movie, was it a war movie, was it crime drama?? Overall, I liked Tom's performance, I enjoyed that, but I didn't like this movie at all. I wanted to, but I just couldn't.

I'm going to give this a 5/10

Thanks for reading and don't forget to comment your thoughts below.