Holland shows serious talent in ‘Cherry’
Until recently, Tom Holland’s main achievement has been that he’s the thirdbest SpiderMan — out of three. But as was the case with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in the “Twilight” movie franchise, it turns out that Holland is a lot better than the opportunities he’s had.
That already seemed to be the case with “Devil All the Time,” a Netflix movie costarring Holland that premiered in September. And now “Cherry,” coming to Apple TV+ on March 12, confirms Holland as a talented actor with a penchant for the dark and desperate. The film is directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, the team behind several Marvel “Avengers” movies, so it’s as if everybody decided to do something serious for a change.
“Cherry” is based on the semiauto
biographical novel by Nico Walker, about a young man who enlists in the Army as a medic and leaves with a bad case of posttraumatic stress disorder. When his medication runs out, he starts doing heroin. When his heroin runs out, he starts robbing banks to buy more heroin. We know all this from the start, when we see him robbing a bank. The rest, told mainly in a long flashback, tells us how he got there and what happens after that.
With “Cherry,” we know we’re in good hands from the first minute. The movie establishes a skewed, sardonic
tone through the narration, with Cherry (Holland) speaking into the camera. And Cherry’s observations are insightful and unexpected throughout. For example, he talks about the feeling of “abasement” that comes with robbing a bank. That’s not the emotion a layman would expect. That’s a description by somebody who actually knows what that’s like.
The film takes its time, and it’s time well taken. Cherry is a teenager from a lowermiddleclass background, living in a notsonice town, but then one day he meets Emily (Ciara Bravo), and his world lights up. Usually, movies about first love make audiences feel part of the experience, as if they’re teenagers, too. But with “Cherry,” we feel the intensity of Cherry’s
emotion for Emily, even as we stand back and see this relationship as something commonplace.
We don’t empathize. We sympathize, and this allows us to almost pity the whole spectacle —
the first time they have sex, which we know they’ll remember as glorious; the painful breakup, which we know they’ll see as dramatic and torturous. “Cherry” conveys the beauty and splendor of
being a teenager, but it doesn’t make you want to be one. By the time he’s in the Army, looking at people who’ve been blown apart or burned to death, love and sex seem like a cruel joke — like an opiate that fooled him into thinking this was his life, when it was really something else.
“Cherry” is like three different movies in one: the teen years, the war experience, and then life as a drug addict. It’s held together by the smart writing, by the overarching tone of tragic absurdity, and by Holland, who hits every bump on Cherry’s way down. He goes from a thoughtful guy who can’t think his way out of a trap to a guy who can barely think at all. When we see Cherry deep into his addiction, he’s doing things that are utterly insane, and yet Holland makes you believe all of it. He also makes you believe that there’s a core decency to this guy that never goes away.
All the while, Bravo provides strong accompaniment for Holland’s journey to hell. She’s touching as this nice girl who more or less got on the wrong bus. Now she has to take the ride.