The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Russos’ ‘Cherry’ bold but uneven
The Russos’ ‘Cherry’ a bold but uneven drama that’s light on impact
After making two of the biggest, most complex superhero movies of all time, Northeast Ohio natives and brothers Joe and Anthony Russo didn’t exactly decide to catch their collective breath with what you would consider “an easy one.” ¶ The co-directors of 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” and 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” — as well as action-packed Marvel Cinematic Universe entries “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014) and “Captain America: Civil War” (2016) — now offer the world “Cherry.”
And while the drama has an MCU fave as its star in Tom Holland (“Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home”) and boasts some contemporary camera work you might expect to find in a superhero flick, “Cherry” is something very different.
It also is uneven and falls short of what you would expect from the Russos.
Set and filmed largely in and around Cleveland, “Cherry” does not involve nearly as many characters or plot threads as their two-part “Avengers” epic does, but the film still presents a mighty challenge.
The Russos knew the adaptation of Nico Walker’s 2017 best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel of the same name — about a disenfranchised young man who falls in love, goes to war, develops post-traumatic stress disorder and becomes a drug addict — would require a delicate touch when it came to tone.
Although it’s hard to second-guess the choices made by the Russos and screenwriters Jessica Goldberg and Angela Russo-Otstot, “Cherry” is as frustrating as it is intriguing, a film that while often engrossing is also surprisingly light on impact.
Being released in theaters in Northeast Ohio and a few other markets this week before being available to stream March 12 via Apple TV+, “Cherry” seeks to be entertaining and funny while dealing in dark-and-depressing subject matter. Again, not easy.
It is divided into chronologically ordered sections, but we meet Holland’s titular character in a prologue set deep into the tale, in 2007.
It is here we are first treated to the kind of striking images of Northeast Ohio — several of them overhead shots — that will be peppered throughout the film. (The Russos spent 10 years of their childhood living on the street where Cherry resides when we meet him.)
“I’m 23 years old, and I still don’t understand what it is that people do,” Cherry says in a bit of narration. “It’s as if all of this were built on nothing and nothing were holding all this together.”
We soon watch as he attempts to rob a bank, and it becomes clear this is not his first time doing this.
From there, we go back in time to Part One — “When Life Was Beginning, I Saw You: 2002.” At this point, Cherry appears to be attending John Carroll University in the Cleveland suburb of University Heights. (He says he was attending “one of the local universities, the one with the Jesuits — it was a decent school.”)
In a class, he notices Emily (Ciara Bravo), a cute girl who then chases him down on campus for some light chitchat. Although Cherry has a girlfriend who attends college out of state, he is instantly smitten with Emily, and the two become a couple.
Perhaps by his coming on too strongly, she one day announces she will be leaving Cleveland to attend a school in Montreal. This abrupt news angers and devastates him, and he soon finds himself walking into an Army recruitment office.
Before learning he has enlisted, Emily tells him she’s changed her mind and wants to be with him. He can’t exactly back out of his commitment to Uncle Sam, however, and Emily then says she wants to wait for him to return. She suggests they get married, and so off to the courthouse they go.
“Cherry” is largely about how decisions can have lasting consequences, and this series of emotional choices made by each of them in a short span of time leads to years of an increasingly dark co-existence following his time as a medic in Iraq.
Because the material is so heavy, the Russos seek to infuse the various sections — which go on to cover everything from basic training to the emotional, physical and financial ruin of drug addiction — with moments of humor. This, along with the aforementioned camera wizardry, helps the viewer from being completely swallowed by the sea of sadness.
Unfortunately, it also causes “Cherry” to feel trite at times.
It helps to have Holland front and center. The accessible-everyman vibe he displays in the “Spider-Man” adventures works here, as well. While Cherry increasingly is a far cry from Peter Parker, Holland’s performance helps to illustrate just how easily the opioid crisis can claim a victim.
Similarly, the lesserknown Bravo (TV’s “Wayne,” “Red Band Society”) makes Emily feel very much like a girl you may know from the neighborhood, a young woman who doesn’t deserve the hardships that lie ahead for her.
The Russos’ adoring shots of Cleveland and a few of its suburbs suggest just how personal the film is to them. And along with working with sister Russo-Otstot, the brothers cast Anthony’s wife, Ann, as Cherry’s mother. They also said in a recent interview they’ve lost — as have so many — people close to them to opioid abuse.
So it’s a bit disappointing that “Cherry” simply doesn’t hit you harder than it does. It’s bleak, yes, but it isn’t consuming in the way it should be.
That said, the Russos are talented filmmakers, and “Cherry” is an attempt at something bold.
We don’t want them to start taking it easy on themselves, do we?