After touring the world in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with their last four films, directors Joe and Anthony Russo head to the streaming circuit with their adaptation of Nico Walker’s, Cherry. A story about an Iraq war veteran returning home and falling into an opioid addiction. The titular Cherry is played by Tom Holland, and Ciara Bravo co-stars as Cherry’s wife, Emily. Cherry is set to be released in theaters on February 26th, and streaming on Apple TV+, March 12th, but it’s probably better if this got as small of a release as possible. With a bizarre marketing campaign including a meme-worthy misprint, and clips that make as much sense out of context than in, Cherry is a disaster on all accounts.
I had the luxury of catching this thanks to a screener sent to me by The Hollywood Reporter, and I am thankful that they allowed me to see it for free so I didn’t have to pay for it. Cherry is a bizarre movie that is based on a book that at least wants to grapple with some hefty, relevant themes. War-inflicted trauma, drug addiction, America’s crushing capitalist systems across the rust belt, we’ve seen it before, but we’ve never seen it like this, and that is the furthest thing from a compliment. The Russo Bros. are directors who have slowly started to show that they have very clear, defined flaws as storytellers. They had the ability to be the most competent version of themselves in franchise movies that are reliant on a winning formula, but now that they’re out of that web, their flaws are on full display.
Before I get into a laundry list full of problems in this movie, the first 20 minutes are genuinely good. It’s visuals are intriguing enough, the fourth wall breaks set-up an interesting relationship between Cherry and the audience, and the relationship between Cherry and Emily has the roots of something unique and cute. Which is too bad, because after Emily makes her first major decision to push the plot into overdrive, Cherry is a maelstrom of issues. All of these issues stem from the Russos because they hold the most important position in the production, but every stage of film-making is hard to process. It’s not unwatchable because it is fascinating to see something not work at all. It’s clear as day that the Russos have no idea what material they’re actually working with and how to expel any meaning onto something that should organically come with it. This is a common occurrence in their films, but considering this is ripe for automatically generating themes and they completely fail to direct that is astounding.
Despite my enjoyment of the roots of this story, the cinematography is purposeless and void of any remote consistency. The camera is placed in bizarre positions to sometimes elicit the feelings of being high, but even when characters are completely sober, the camera is bouncing around a scene like a child who just discovered sugar. After a while you’ll notice that the edits between shots are without rhyme or reason. I feel bad for Newton Thomas Sigel because he usually does good work, but the Russos direct him into a wall. Shot to shot nothing lines up visually or maintains a sense of consistency with tone. Oftentimes the camera will take a high angle as if it were observing Cherry, and the next there are acres of negative space for no reason. Then comes the aspect ratio change. Which is something the Russos clearly wanted to make work, but it comes across as directors who have no idea how to make a meaningful decision when making a movie. I’m not going to try and explain what aspect ratio they end up using because it has to be seen to be believed.
They eventually revert back to the widescreen format, but it (again) makes you wonder why the hell they even made that decision in the first place, and honestly, I don’t think they have an answer. Which leads to some of the reasons why we watch movies to begin with. When we watch movies (great ones especially), we leave feeling like something has been answered for us, or the storytellers leave it up to us to decide. Sometimes these emotions are validating, conflicting, confusing, concerning, but you can have a dialogue about it and figure it out. Cherry isn’t concerned with being about anything, giving answers, or allowing us to decide for ourselves. It exists without purpose, intent, or drive to relay emotion based on the inspirations they’re pulling from. Since Winter Soldier, the Russos have been notorious for doing a great job of being inspired, but can’t capitalize on any of that. This is more of that, but it has zero idea how to maneuver this world, characters, or themes, because frankly, they don’t know how.
Typically it’s easy to see when a respective editor, screenwriter, or composer doesn’t quite execute on a director’s vision, but every fault lies on their shoulders. Whether it’s Henry Jackman’s overbearing score that makes you feel like your head is being slammed against a grand piano, or Sigel’s cinematography lacking any purposeful imagery rooted in elevating themes of emotionally spiraling out of control, they’ve just been misdirected. Tom Holland has some scenes where he is convincing, but he can’t sell this estranged, socially betrayed vereran because there isn’t any material that isn’t some rehash of a drug addicted character in Breaking Bad. Cherry is supposedly an avatar of these rural towns plagued by drug epidemics, but the setting of Cleveland has zero personality. It could have been any rural city across the midwest and we wouldn’t have known the difference. All of this amounts to wondering how in the world these guys with zero perspective or craftsmanship with storytelling got more work. If Cherry is supposedly their big breakout from the mold of IP films, then maybe they’re better off not making movies.
This is harsh, and honestly, I didn’t expect Cherry to be as bad as it is because I’m always rooting for directors to flex their creative muscles, and I love being proven wrong. Unfortunately, this is a disaster across all stages of the production that does so much disservice to the material it thinks it’s about. I can’t imagine a veteran or recovered drug addict to feel they were properly represented by a movie that has no answers for them. It’s apparently anti-capitalist, but when you realize two dudes bolstered by the backing of mega-IP can’t even manage to tackle that convincingly, the lack of irony hurts more. Seriously, make sure you pay close attention to the names of the banks throughout the movie, or the names of ancillary characters. It reads as cynical to the infrastructure of America, but they never interrogate it. Probably because they don’t know how, but it comes across as patronizing because they think they’ve sold us on an idea, and they’re proud of doing the bare minimum. If Cherry is supposedly the start of a career for two guys who led Avengers to the top of the box office charts, then they’re off on the worst foot imaginable. There is no rhythm or excitement to this movie, it’s movie soup that tells us all we need to know about two white guys who earned it all because their best skill is saying, “Action!”