Cherry (2021)
Directed by Joe Russo
Cherry drifts from college dropout to army medic in Iraq—anchored only by his one true love, Emily. But after returning from the war with PTSD, his life spirals into drugs and crime as he struggles to find his place in the world.
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Yet the Russos don’t limit themselves to simply that predecessor, delivering wartime aerial panoramas intended to conjure memories of Apocalypse Now, basic training sequences indebted to Full Metal Jacket, bank robberies with an icy Heat sheen, post-bank robbery getaway car freak-outs modeled after Reservoir Dogs, and jauntily edited action that boasts a faint whiff of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
The basic training sequences with the maniacal drill sergeants are reminiscent of “Full Metal Jacket,” while the war scenes are effective but nothing we haven’t seen before.
Cherry takes inspirations from Fight Club , Full Metal Jacket , Jarhead , and Requiem for a Dream to put them in a blender for a punishing two hours and twenty minutes, but instead of congealing into a satisfying whole, they simply create sequential layers of clashing flavors that make you want to lie down from the effort of chugging it all in one sitting.
They do less well when Cherry enters basic training: The directors change the aspect ratio and, in essence, offer up a condensed remake of the first third of Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
I hope the Russos were not just making their Deer Hunter meets Full Metal Jacket movie as a career stamp, with no outward cause in mind.
It’s as though the Russo brothers played “Full Metal Jacket” on repeat, but never grasped how that film’s dialogue worked.
Cherry takes inspirations from Fight Club , Full Metal Jacket , Jarhead , and Requiem for a Dream to put them in a blender for a punishing two hours and twenty minutes, but instead of congealing into a satisfying whole, they simply create sequential layers of clashing flavors that make you want to lie down from the effort of chugging it all in one sitting.
Bogged down by the type of macho angsty nihilism that already felt dated back when David Fincher successfully played around with the same sort of thing in 1999’s Fight Club , Cherry clobbers the viewer over the head for a numbing 141 minutes, dragging us through the main character’s troubled life.
…or whichever one of the “Fight Club”-fresh sight gags happens to be misfiring in the background.
As is, Cherry feels like Taxi Driver had an affair with Full Metal Jacket , and had a baby raised by Fight Club .
Think of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries, Angelina Jolie in Gia and Heath Ledger in Candy.
Maybe he's a teenage fatalist; or maybe he's just familiar with the long, intoxicated legacy that precedes him onscreen in films like Drugstore Cowboy , Trainspotting , Beautiful Boy , The Basketball Diaries , Requiem for a Dream — the latest initiate in what you might call an already-exhaustive Portrait of the Addict As a Young Man canon.
If you want a thrilling, grimy crime story with desperate robbers (who are also processing their experience as veterans), delve into Christian Gudegast’s Den of Thieves .
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Taking a break from Marvel (if not their Spider-Man), directing brothers Joe and Anthony Russo ("Captain America: Winter Soldier," "Avengers: Endgame") treat the material with a flashy visual style which, combined with Holland’s constant narration, gives the impression the film was adapted from a graphic novel or comic - perhaps a grittier approach was in order here.
Anthony and Joe Russo’s first film since Avengers: Endgame , the two boldly adopt an operatic vibe in their adaptation of Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel.
The book was called “Cherry,” and the bestseller’s instant success would earn enough to afford its 33-year-old author — a former Iraq War Army medic, opioid addict, and mild-mannered bank robber in that order — a second chance to be all that he could be, even before directors Anthony and Joe Russo paid him $1 million dollars for the film rights and turned it into their first post-“Avengers: Endgame” production.
Cherry, the follow-up from directors Anthony and Joe Russo after their all-time box office record-setter Avengers: Endgame, is a strange beast.
The movie sees him reunite with Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, but Spider-Man this ain't.
After their stewardship of a handful of squillion dollar-grossing MCU features — most recently Avengers: Endgame — it's no great mystery why Anthony and Joe Russo would be given carte blanche to return to something closer to their origins, with a story rooted in their native Cleveland.
The bank-heist-filled final act carries none of the weight engendered by Cherry’s time in the military, as if each version of Holland is some Cloud Atlas -like variation on the past.