I enjoyed this film - but I know it'll be divisive

hockeylass-134-929537

You will either love this film, or really dislike it, and I very much doubt there'll be an in between owing to the subject matter and style choices - but I for one really appreciated this film and it's one that'll stay with me for quite some time.

I can't use the word "enjoy" because the story is so desperately sad overall, and some of the scenes are so harrowing that it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

The first half an hour of Cherry struggles to find its place. The longer I think on it, the more it feels like that was an intentional choice. The character himself is drifting through his life, never really going anywhere and the feel of the movie at the start is much the same. As it finds its footing though, what becomes abundantly clear is that the systems Cherry puts his trust in, fail him. And as he scrabbles to find some sense of normalcy, bad decisions lead him along a path that way too many people have found themselves down.

The Russo Brothers take a lot of stick - and I feel cannot win. It's as though film critics are not willing to allow them to move away from the blockbusters they made. Not that they want them to make those blockbusters any more either. Here, they're clearly indulging in their passions, and though I didn't like some of the style choices, and I wish they'd given Emily a slightly deeper character arc, I respect those choices and I understand why they made them.

Cinematography is everything I would come to expect from Newton Thomas Sigel, the chapters "Basic" and "Cherry" my absolute favourites. Critics have slated the script - again a criticism that I feel is a bit harsh given a lot of the text is directly lifted from the book of the same name.

Tom Holland is transcendent in this role as the titular anti-hero. To start with he acts as you would come to expect (especially if you've seen his work in The Devil All The Time) - but as his character descends into the deepest pit of despair, he knocks it out of the park. There's times you lose the fact it's actually him - by the end he's a shell of a man. He really leaves it all out there, and criticisms that he's miscast are, to my mind, absurd. Ciara Bravo is excellent too as his wife, Emily, and the supporting cast do their jobs well as wasters and chancers who enable Cherry's demise.

My overwhelming sadness by the end of the movie is stemmed from the fact that while this is the story of one man, there's so many more out there facing the same struggles, so many people out there who could so easily fall down the same hole.

score 8/10

hockeylass-134-929537 1 March 2021

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6649408/