Cherry

When you've just directed some of the biggest films ever made you would of course want a change of direction. Something more personal, more intimate, a step away from the CGI carnage and family friendly framework blockbuster movies are built on. Cherry, the new film from Anthony and Joe Russo, is the polar opposite of the Avengers films, a story of one man's descent into hell that's laden with horror, profanity and copious drug abuse. It's also a ponderous and pretentious wet fart of a film that never once feels genuine.

It's the wedding ring that you'll notice first. The band of gold on Cherry's (Tom Holland) finger that stays on throughout the film, even in the depths of addiction. To quote Baltimore's mainest man Bubbles from The Wire, "Shit, you're married to the needle boy, that shit would have been pawned off if you're for real". It's just one of many things about Cherry that don't ring true. It could have been good. Two directors coming off years of huge success, a young actor willing and ready to debase himself to prove there's more to him than webshooters and wisecracks and a story that's sadly, hideously topical but when it's over all you'll be left with is a sore hoop from it's ridiculous (142 minutes) running time and a storyline that's been done better a 1000 times already. And that rectum POV. Yeah....

Cherry's floating through life. Casual drug use, hanging with his boys, classes, it's a drab existence until Emily (Ciara Bravo) lights him up and he's smitten, falling in love fast, an admission of which scares her and puts her on the defensive. Fearing he's lost her he impulsively joins the army and finds himself in Middle East, working as a medic and watching the young men he has befriended being eviscerated and incinerated. Back in the world, he's in Ciara's arms again but P.T.S.D. has dug it's claws in deep and opioids and alcohol are the only things keeping the nightmares at bay. Then one day the pills just aren't enough anymore...

Tom Holland's way too good for this film, especially in the earlier parts of the film where he's a lost young man looking for his way in life. An afternoon ecstasy fuelled admission to a girl is the only moment you'll smile in this one and it's downhill all the way from there as the film takes an episodic wallow in abject "DRUGS ARE BAD M'KAY" style misery that cinema's been beating us over the head with since the days of Christiane F and Panic In Needle Park. Halfhearted jabs at America's willingness to solve every problem with medication are made and then forgotten in favour of more vomit and diarrhea. Then as the downward spiral really kicks off the big acting kicks in. The huge dramatics designed to win awards get louder and louder and the naturalism of earlier performances vanish and by the opera scored climax you'll be rolling your eyes far more than the character onscreen.

In places it feels like a first film. A gritty indie designed to shock and repel, needles unflinchingly penetrating skin, intestines pushed back into a stomach cavity, Ireland's own Jack Reynor calling the actor best known as Peter Parker a "cunt nugget", horrible graphics overlaying the action and all manner of directorial flourishes you'd usually only see from a director fresh out of film school who's out to impress. But it's all for naught, window dressing on an old story. Touches that strive for edginess but that only add self importance. It's not a good sign when you check to see how long is left in a film and it's really not a good sign when you think "For fuck sake" when you see there's still 90 more minutes of it.

Cherry is streaming now on Apple TV. It's not worth your time.