Cherry

An unexpected gem that took my breath away! Cherry is heavy-handed, uncomfortable, disturbing, psychologically dense with some strong scenes, and definitely not for the faint of heart. Cherry is to the drama genre what The Human Centipede is to horror, and I have to applaud. You will be sick and nauseous, squirming like an earthworm, but fascinated, shocked, surprised and delighted at the same time. For a drama, it's definitely powerful! The Russo Brothers serve up a formally polished and dense story with Tom Holland at his best, reaching his own bottom and delivering the most impressive performance of his career. He may very well be at the top of his game amongst teenage actors at the moment. The film starts out as a very nice and easygoing romance that soon turns into a war hell in Iraq, where there were also intestines and burnt corpses, the training of the soldiers is one of the best I have ever seen in the war genre, and if I thought that this would be the highlight of the whole film, I was wrong, because right after that we watch the disintegration of human personality in the most horrible form. The film takes the best of Euphoria and Requiem for a Dream and I don't think I've ever seen a junkie's lair so authentically and uncomfortably portrayed – shit, vomit, syringes everywhere – followed by well shot bank robberies. I was already wondering that if in the last 20 minutes the film turned into a rape and revenge drama, it would be the top of the list and I'll be taken away. I haven't seen such a beautiful blending of genres so intense and powerful in a long time. I'm tempted to watch it again, I have to give it full marks. Nothing for the weak! 8.5/10. (14.03.2021)

If they sped up all the slow-mo and did away with all those pointless formal gimmicks, this film would be less than 90 minutes long and maybe a bit more bearable. Maybe. I’d really love to know what the Russo brothers thought they were doing. Perhaps, after years lost in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they wanted to prove they know everything and picked a premise that is part high-school romance at times, part war satire, part drug-addict drama, and part gangster flick with bank robberies, and they packed everything they could think of into it. There are many moments where that excessive formal indulgence feels unintentionally funny. And unfortunately, I didn’t even dig Tom Holland, whom I generally quite like. (12.03.2021)

Kids, drugs are bad, right?! This unnecessarily long teen drama tries to present worn-out motifs in a fresh way. For me, however, those motifs were often poorly chosen, irritating and generally inconsistent. Shabby directing of a run-of-the-mill subject that’s watchable thanks only to Tom Holland, who is again great. (22.05.2021)

Cherry manages to evoke some pretty strong emotions occasionally, but it's crucial to point out that it does so entirely through audiovisual means. It’s problematic to form a close connection with any one character, the motivations are often straight out of a pulp novel, and there are simply too many styles for one film. Still, I can't say I was bored; if I wanted to single out anything in particular, it would definitely be the war passage, which is a model of craftsmanship in every respect. As a whole, it's unfortunately quite fragmented, and although Tom Holland is out for blood, for me he sometimes had trouble coming across as believable. In formal terms it's spectacular, but I can't shake the impression that it's really just kind of a theatrical waste of the Russo brothers' talents, and on material that would have been much better suited to a more intimate treatment. [60%] (02.05.2021)