Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Written by Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg
Starring Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor
Rated R for graphic drug abuse, disturbing and violent images, pervasive language, and sexual content
Runtime: 140 minutes
In theaters Feb. 26, on AppleTV+ March 12

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

This is what Preston Sturges warned us about. 

Some portion of major motion picture directors have always had their heads firmly implanted in their posterior. The combination of ego and hubris emanating from the kinds of directors who have two back-to-back films among the 10 highest grossing of all time is as noxious as it is palpable. Cherry, from the Russo brothers–newly escaped from the Marvel Cinematic Universe–is exactly the kind of movie Preston Sturges tried to warn us about when he made Sullivan’s Travels 80 years ago. Popcorn merchants given free reign to make a film about the plights of the common man. They should have stuck with Iron Man. Instead, Cherry is a film so self-serious that there were moments I was concerned that it was supposed to be a parody that never once winked at its audience.

Sadly, that’s not even the biggest problem with Cherry. The film, based on a semi-autobiographical novel, is about an unnamed protagonist (Tom Holland), who goes to college, drops out to enlist in the military, gets deployed as a medic in Iraq, comes home, becomes addicted to opiods, and ends up robbing banks to support his addiction. The film’s fatal flaw is that it never engages with anything that happens on an emotional level. 

Cherry makes use of a lot of voiceover to deliver exposition and the lead character’s inner thoughts. Like any tool, voiceover itself isn’t intrinsically good or bad. It can be used to convey information efficiently, provide context, or reveal a character’s inner thoughts. When used poorly, like in this film, it can create additional distance between the audience and what is happening on screen. Here, the voiceover takes the form of attempting witty or poetic observations from the main character. It makes sense that this character, broken by his circumstances, would be detached in his descriptions of basic training or the horrors of war. But it really comes across as deflection when earnestness is needed. He’s not Tim O’Brien, trying to convey a sense of loss and confusion. Because he can only comment from his own perspective, as a person turning in desperation to pharmacological escape because he’s unable to process the trauma, there is no additional perspective gained from the voiceover. The voiceover represents the ‘present’ in the film, and most of it is told as a flashback, giving the audience this same detached observation. 

When we see Holland unable to sleep without screaming, we understand why. We’ve seen some of the horrific things he has seen. But the voiceover telling us he can’t sleep without screaming only pushes us further from the character’s trauma. This is a film that goes away from empathy at every turn. It’s not just that the characters within are all one-note–and that note is unpleasant–but even that unpleasantness is distanced from us. There are only a few times over the course of Cherry’s 140 minutes where the film breaks through to find real emotions, but then it swiftly moves on to the next moment. If you’re going to retread the familiar ground of the PTSD movie and the drug movie, you at least need to at least engage emotionally with what is being captured on film. 

After making some of the most functional entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was curious to see what the Russos would do as directors. They could choose to do anything, and seeing them cash their blank check had me at least curious to see what they were like, removed from the well-oiled Marvel machine. I wasn’t sold on them, but I was willing to see what they would do. After seeing Cherry, I’ve gone from unsold to ‘I’d like to make a return.’ This film is stylish and full of flourishes mostly absent from their Marvel output, but in service of nothing beyond the image itself. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, visit https://drugfree.org/. 

If you are or know a veteran in crisis, visit https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/.