In ‘Cherry’, Tom Holland has a buzzcut, dead eyes and a toned complexion. In a look-at-my-badass-self reversal of the lavish exploits of the ‘Spider-Man’ films, he plays an Iraq war veteran turned opioid addict, heroin addict, and bank robber, and he looks zoned and tense . look like Eminem as a fallen Eagle Scout. He gets a cold sweat, he cries real tears and talks in a baggy voice, he pulls his face in a pale mask of pain, and at one point he rubs the top of his head and says, “I got this sound in my head …why can’t it stop? “ When his girlfriend, also a junkie, abandons him for a spell, he sits in his car and inserts a hypodermic needle into his thigh over and over so he will feel something
Holland’s character is never mentioned (he’s really nowhere else), and in theory it’s the kind of role you can imagine Sean Penn took on in the late ’80s or’ 90s. Penn, addicted to edge, always supported his Method mojo – and that, in an overly businesslike way, is Cherry’s mission. The film is a double dose of brand extension. For the Netherlands the motivation is clear: he proves that he is not just any kid in a spandex suit, but a lightweight “escapist” star – he can also do the real tough things. But “Cherry” is also a flashy advertisement for the directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, the superstar superhero authors of the “Avengers” and “Captain America” movies. In “Cherry” they prove their dark credibility.
Except it all plays like a giant synthetic pot! “Cherry” is based on a 2018 semi-autobiographical novel by Nico Walker, a decorated US Army veteran who was in prison for bank robbery, and the book was celebrated as a gritty generation cry. The Russo brothers, who work in a style of embellished extravagance, blow it up into a showreel. They’re trying to think beyond Marvel and show off their real-life chops, but what they’re demonstrating instead is that even with this kind of down-in-the-trenches material, they still think like fantasists. “Cherry” has the gleaming inauthenticity of a bad Tony Scott movie. The Russos treat Walker’s novel as if it were a graphic novel – a layered cake of grunge all frosted.
It starts as a love story set in college, where the nameless hero of the Netherlands, a dork with glasses and floppy bangs, meets Emily (Ciara Bravo), who plays hard to get, then doesn’t, and then does, saying that she goes to school in Montreal (but only because she is afraid of how deep their love is). This leaves the Netherlands so lost that he enrolls in the army, allowing the Russos to organize basic training that resembles a movie brat from “Full Metal Jacket.” (It’s here that the movie calls Holland a “cherry.”) Then it’s off to the Iraq War, where the Russos can at least draw on their action chops, battle dizzying camerawork and explosive grandeur , though this series spilled guts, doesn’t feel any more authentic than “Forrest Gump’s Vietnam” did. In any case, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the filmmakers are fighting these wars again use them.
Back home (which is Cleveland, by the way), the Netherlands spirals into PTSD and Oxycontin addiction. He has nightly panic (“I didn’t sleep. And when I did, I dreamed of violence”), and at one point he takes Emily to the theater and yells at someone for wearing an LL Bean coat instead of dressing up (making you wonder if this is PTSD or “Project Runway”). But despite the clichés about bad behavior, the fight doesn’t seem to have changed him internally.
The problem with “Cherry” is that the movie presents itself as a fear-ridden part of life, but almost every moment feels based not on experience but on the experience of other movies. The Russos elevator blooms from everything from ‘Natural Born Killers’ to ‘Far From Heaven’ to Wes Anderson, and they mix in slow motion and pieces of opera, with sounds magnified and stylized, and images emphasized with a kind of music from the 80s video cut-in “significance”. Yet they never convince us of the organic truth of the story they tell. Holland’s non-stop voice-over narration (“I’m 23 years old and I still don’t understand what people do. It’s like all this is built on nothing and nothing holds it all together”) shows how the filmmakers trust it material not to lead a life of its own. Instead, each scene says, “Look at the cool way we’re illustrating this!”
Tom Holland is not a bad actor, and in “Cherry” he proves his skills. He touches a variety of dissolute looks and moods. Yet there is no real danger to him. (That’s the difference between a good Marvel boy and a bad Sean Penn boy.) “Cherry,” after some hesitation, finds a semblance of over-cohesion in the second half when it turns into a two-junkie drama. spiraling into the abyss. It’s like seeing ‘Sid and Nancy’ as a middle-class doomfest, performed in the style of ‘Top Gun’. Holland’s character isn’t just a hopeless addict, he’s a colossally stupid and self-destructive addict. Asked to protect a drug dealer’s portable safe, he and Emily eventually shoot it open and steal the small mountain of drugs inside. Why are they doing it? So that the film can come off their both-headed masochistic extravagance.
And I haven’t even mentioned the bank robberies yet! Robbers often wear masks and have plans because there are things called surveillance cameras, and also police, that in some way interfere with the success of crime. But in Cherry, Holland just wanders into one Cleveland bank after another, disguised, waving his gun and strangely friendly conversations with the tellers (who are all women) handing over piles of bills. And then … nothing. No police chase, no repercussions. We realize, of course, that it can’t be long, but we also realize, with a sinking feeling, that the Russos must now think they’re making a Tarantino movie. No. Not even close. There is hardly a moment in “Cherry” that is believable, but the real crime of the movie is that there is hardly a moment in it that is fun. The only emotion the film conveys is being full of itself.