Cherry Review: Tom Holland Acts Methodically in an Overblown Dud From the Russo Brothers Cherry Review: Tom Holland Acts Methodically in an Overblown Dud From the Russo Brothers
The Spider-Man star plays a nowhere dude who falls in love, goes to war, and becomes a junkie bank robber.
Owen Gleiberman, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
With: Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor, Michael Rispoli, Jeff Wahlberg, Forrest Goodluck, Michael Gandolfini.
In “Cherry,” Tom Holland sports a buzzcut, dead eyes, and a skeevy complexion. In a look-at-my-badass-self reversal from the effusive heroics of the “Spider-Man” films, he plays an Iraq War veteran turned opioid addict turned heroin addict turned bank robber, and he looks zoned-out and strung-out, like Eminem as a fallen Eagle Scout. He gets the cold sweats, he weeps real tears and talks in a phlegmy voice, he contorts his face into a pale mask of pain, and at one point he rubs the top of his noggin and says, “I have th
2/26/2021
Tom Holland plays a Cleveland college dropout who spirals into drug addiction and crime after coming home from Iraq with PTSD in the Russo Brothers drama based on Nico Walker s novel. Sometimes I feel like I ve already seen everything that s gonna happen. And it s a nightmare, says Tom Holland s title character early in the voiceover narration that gurgles like whitewater rapids through the Russo Brothers
Cherry. A little later, after experiencing the horror of combat as an Army medic in Iraq, he adds: Suddenly there was nothing interesting about it anymore. You might find yourself nodding in agreement for the wrong reasons during this posturing vanity production, a drama that wears its gritty poetry on its sleeve like a macho film-school merit badge, trivializing war, trauma and addiction with its veneration of style over psychological complexity.