Joe and Anthony Russo are a pair of perfectly competent directors who kind of accidentally stumbled into making some of the most successful movies of all time. That being said, they haven’t cultivated much of an independent identity as filmmakers, having spent so much of their career now under the shadow of stronger creative forces; whether it be in their films for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (where they have only a fraction of the power of Kevin Feige and the larger corporation) or even on a show like Community which was so singularly Dan Harmons’ vision -though full disclosure, I think their work on that show is better than anything they’ve done since. Avengers: Endgame was their biggest triumph yet, the highest grossing movie of all time for a while; but clearly they feel uncomfortable being boxed into that media property. And perhaps they’re aware of criticisms such as mine and of being perceived as mere ‘journeymen’ directors, just doing what more important producers tell them to -certainly their comments during that whole foolish Scorsese debacle betrayed a touch of insecurity in their reputation. With Cherry, an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel by Nico Walker about an Iraq vet struggling with PTSD and an addiction to opioids, they’re very clearly chasing a kind of legitimacy -to prove they’re more than just the Marvel guys.
It is not a successful experiment, and if anything it may demonstrate that the Russos belong within an environment where they have limited control. Because their direction on Cherry is so haphazard and inconsistent and implicitly desperate that it ruins what could otherwise have been a really great film. The story is interesting enough, and shines a spotlight on a very particular kind of veteran experience and drug addiction. There’s a lot of real stakes and drama, and you can tell the author put a fair degree of character into the writing by what they’re attempting to do with it here. I could see this movie being something like The Hurt Locker or a modern equivalent of Trainspotting. The problem is the Russos see it as both, and a whole host of other things as well.
For the life of them they cannot settle on a single tone and so they throw as many as they can at you in a discombobulating array of sharp but completely inappropriate choices. The film employs that wryly sardonic free-form narration device of House of Cards or Fleabag (or indeed Trainspotting) matched with incredibly grim sequences or an intense atmosphere. It wants to be a black comedy, an emotional drama, a stringent social commentary, even a sincere romance all at once. There are title cards denoting the films’ chapters as though it were an epic drama -exactly the sort of “pretentious” device these filmmakers have previously decried. The screenplay, credited to Jessica Goldberg and Angela Russo-Otstot –the directors’ sister, doesn’t favour any one approach to the films’ story; as though it was written on a scene-by-scene basis with consistency only determined by what genre and/or filmmaking style the writers were thinking about at that moment. It shouldn’t be a surprise that much of the dialogue is terrible and poorly thought through as a result of this –whole lines written it seems around the novelty of Tom Holland swearing or being obscene.
Tom Holland is doing this movie for the same reason the Russos are, as a way of breaking out of the mould of Spider-Man (and the particular nice, harmless reputation it has built him) and into adult performances. To this end, he fares a lot better than his last attempt, The Devil All the Time; and in fact though the writing doesn’t do him any favours and there are moments where his acting can be very unnatural (somebody give him a role that incorporates his actual accent!) it might honestly be his best performance yet. Like everything else, it’s by no means consistent, but especially by the PTSD and addict phase of his character arc, he does surprisingly well with the heavy material presented to him –and it’s a shame that it is so lost in all the incompetence of the rest of the film. Likewise, good actors like Jack Reynor and Forrest Goodluck are stifled, the only other in the cast who manages to transcend the madness at times is Ciara Bravo as the ill-fortuned principal love interest.
And I do mean madness. The directing is all over the map as the Russos try every technique they can think of and then some that they may be making up on the spot. There are whip-pans, there are overhead shots, there is dialogue in blaring obnoxious text on-screen, there’s a long take, there is monochrome, plenty of sequences of slow motion, and there is even a stylized shot from the inside of Holland’s anus. There is no rhyme or reason for any of these except perhaps that the Russos wish to emulate certain kinds of films and filmmakers, from Stanley Kubrick to Danny Boyle to Steven Soderbergh to yes, Martin Scorsese. But they don’t seem to understand why those filmmakers make their particular choices, and as such are replicating them without meaning. They want the chaotic flow of something like Trainspotting, but without any semblance of its’ youthful energy (lust for life). They’re aiming for the ominous tension of Full Metal Jacket, but aren’t interested in interrogating the abusive toxicity of military routine. It just comes across as a series of touchstones to wildly different cinematic styles with no discernible coalescence. In isolation, a couple of the choices here do work -that long take near the end is especially good, using its’ real-time pacing to excellent effect. But its’ success only further emphasizes how much the movie around this scene doesn’t work. It’s a culminating moment that would mean a lot if the road taken to it weren’t so shabby.
It wasn’t until late in the film that I realized it is called Cherry not for the occasional floods of red that envelop the screen or a bizarre virginity metaphor in the military, but because it is the name of Hollands’ character. That it went so long without clarifying this or that I was so distracted to notice such a basic detail does not reflect well on the movie at all. In a small way I do admire the Russo Brothers here, for trying to really distance themselves from Marvel and do something genuinely different; and I also feel bad for them that the first time they seriously attempt to experiment and expand as filmmakers it results in something pretty awful. If they temper their ambitions, especially on the technical end, they may improve in the future. But Cherry is bad, unceasingly and elaborately bad. And it’s so gonzo in its’ badness that at the very least it isn’t liable to be forgotten any time soon.
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