Cherry is an emotionally draining, highly intense film about war, drug addiction, PTSD and bank robberies. Check out the details in this parents guide movie review.
Cherry, starring Tom Holland and directed by the Russo brothers, drops on AppleTV+ tomorrow, March 12th. The film is based off of Nico Walker’s 2018 book of the same name. While the book is not a direct autobiography, it is based off of his own experiences. Check out the details in my parents guide movie review.
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Cherry Movie Quotes
Cherry Parents Guide
Nico (Tom Holland) meets the love of his life, Emily (Ciara Bravo), who tells him she is moving to Canada. Due to this relevation, he decides to enlist in the Army to become a medic. While stationed in Iraq, Nico (AKA Cherry) witnesses horrifying scenes which result in him suffering from PTSD and eventually becoming a drug addict when he returns. After draining his finances to support his drug habit, Cherry turns to robbing banks.
Cherry Movie Age Appropriate
Lets take a look at what parents need to know before allowing their kids to view Cherry movie.
Language: The film contains very strong language with profanity used often throughout the entire film. Words include: the F-word, the S-word, the B-word, a**h*le, p*&&y, c*ck, c*nt, d*ck, t*tties, b*st*rd, ret*rd g-d d*mn and more.
Sexual Content/Nudity: The film contains some heavy kissing, characters seen in their underwear, and implied sex with sexual talk like “she takes it up the a**.” There is also a graphic scene in which a character masturbates in a port-a-potty.
Drugs/Alcohol: Characters drink, smoke tobacco, smoke marijuana, take ecstasy, use Oxycontin, snort cocaine and shoot up herion. The drug use scenes are very graphic and characters are repeatedly shown shooting up heroin in their arm and foot. There is also a scene in which one character is rushed to the hospital because of an overdose.
Violence: The film contains bank robberies, guns, guns shot in the air and characters dying of gun shot wounds. This film also contains scenes from a war zone. One scene contains a part where a character is shown where his guts are hanging out. There is another scene in which a vehicle is blown up and the individuals in the vehicle are shown charred up after the fire took their lives. A character also suffers from PTSD and sees flashbacks of soldiers with gaping wounds.
Overall Thoughts
The main problem with Cherry is the message it attempts to deliver to audiences. Is it a story about a futile war and the horrors young soldiers endure? Or perhaps Cherry is about the effects of war and the lack of support for veterans? Heck, Cherry could also be perceived as a revenge story against swindling financial institutions, as depicted in the film as “Sh*tty Bank” and “Banks F*ck America.” Cherry tries to pack in all these themes into its 2 hour and 20 minute runtime, resulting in a convoluted mess that never examines the root of the problems but instead skims over the scratchy surface. The Russo’s do seem aware of its flaws and make attempts to keep some sort of order to the story by breaking it into four parts. However, these attempts only result in a more disconnected storyline which feels more like four separate stories within the film.
It seems filmmakers as of late prefer a lengthy film over quality, as if that is what will put moviegoers in seats. The Russo’s are known for creating the longest Marvel film ever with Avengers: Endgame running over 3 hours long. In that case it made sense, as they had to successfully endcap a story that has spanned seven years. The length of Cherry for what little actual plot there is seems to contribute to the flaws. Perhaps a tighter script and a more fluid story would have prevented the ocassional drag and disengagement of the story, leading to greater viewing satisfaction.
Where Cherry got it right was with the casting of Tom Holland. Holland enthusiasically delves into the role of Nico as if he has something to prove, that being, he is more than your “friendly neighborhood” actor but possesses the talent to embody the anguish and mental deterioration of his character. Yet even with Hollands best attempts, he could not rescue this one.
There are some captivating moments in Cherry, but ultimately it is a film comprised of scenes that we have surely seen before in different iterations. Strange afflicted love, check. War is hell, check. Drug addiction is real and destroys lives, check. Go to prison for robbing banks, check. That’s basically all this movie is to the tune of almost 2 and half hours. I get Tom Holland is trying REALLY hard not to be typecast, but the movies I’ve seen of his outside the MCU are not doing it for me. Perhaps a younger generation whose lives have been upended by the opiod epidemic can find something of note here, those who feel a connection with an actor of their age group, but it has all been done before and with better results.
