It’s not everyday where a movie is filmed in your city. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo were born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Early October 2019, they started filming their new movie ‘Cherry’ in their old local hang out spots. Actors Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo worked together to tell the story of Nico Walker, a war veteran turned criminal.

Before we dive too deep into this review, please note this will contain spoilers and Cherry is an R rated film. This review will discuss some of the graphic scenes in the movie.

The movie opens with a fearful close-up of Tom Holland in an orange scarf and baseball cap. Tom Holland’s character does not have a name, although he is playing the part of Nico Walker. Holland’s character stares directly at the camera and will even pause to speak directly to the audience in order to tell the story. Breaking the fourth wall and allowing the audience to peak inside of Nico’s mind, it allows viewers to quickly form a connection to the character they watch on the screen.

Holland’s character robs his final bank in the opening scene. He is overwashed in this feeling that this is the end, when really the movie just started. ‘Cherry’ is broken up into sections. This scene is part of the prologue. The prologue is about five minutes long, but it grabs the attention of the audience.

Next, we go to Part One. This section is titled ‘When Life Was Beginning I Saw You.’ It opens up on the back of Ciara Bravo who plays ‘Emily’ in this movie. Holland’s character is blown away by her glowing skin and immediately the audience can recognise that this is going to be a love story. Part one takes place in 2002 and gives a little more background to Holland’s character and his friends. It shows the rawness of falling in love, struggling with money, getting into arguments, and making poor decisions. After Holland’s character tells Emily that he loves her, she is taken aback. She loves him too, but she feels as if love is your emotions playing tricks on you. In order to almost snap herself out of love, she tells Holland’s character she is moving to Montreal in Canada for school. Heartbroken, he joins the United States Army.

One night when Emily was supposed to say goodbye to Holland’s character, she reveals that she was not going to move to Montreal and wanted to stay in Cleveland with him instead. Unfortunately, it was a little late for that because Holland’s character had already been sworn into the army to become a medic. They have a sweet goodbye after eloping, and then the movie moves on to Part Two: Basic.

2003, and Holland’s character is now in basic training for the United States Army. This part of the movie shows what it is like to be physically and emotionally abused in order to train soldiers. Drill sergeants will humiliate you, yell at you, taunt you, and work you until you can’t work anymore.

Holland’s character said during basic training, “I started to get this weird feeling like it was all just make-believe. That we were just pretending to be soldiers. The drill sergeants were just pretending to be drill sergeants. And the army was pretending to be the army.”

However, basic training can only train you so much. It cannot prepare you for the actual horrors of war yet to come for these young men. Next, the movie moves on to Part Three: Cherry.

This section takes Holland’s character out into the heart of war. This part is not for the weak stomach. It shows the horrors of fighting for your country and at one point Holland’s character warns the audience to never join the army. Eventually, the horrific army experience comes to an end, when Holland’s character runs into a gymnasium and accepts a medal for his service. Once again he is reunited with his wife Emily, and she takes him home to their new house. Here we are taken to Part Four in 2005: Home.

Returning home from the army, Holland’s character has developed PTSD. He lies awake at night, cries constantly, trembles viciously, and suffers other physical symptoms that harm him and his mental health. His wife, Emily attempts to ease him and they even try going to see a play at the State Theatre at Playhouse Square. Easily upset that he and Emily are the only ones dressed up nice for the theatre, he starts yelling at strangers and even punches a mirror in the bathroom, causing him and Emily to go home early. Holland’s character had been on Xanex for anxiety, eventually got prescribed oxicoten, and then he and his wife Emily turned to more hardcore drugs. This takes us to Part Five: Dope Life.

This part shows the downward spiral of drugs, addiction, and bankruptcy. Both Emily and Holland’s character start shooting up heroin and abusing other substances. The hole kept being dug deeper though because the more a person wants drugs, the more money it's going to cost them. Desperate for drugs, Holland’s character agrees to watch a safe for Black. Black is a scary mysterious man who deals to Coke, and Coke deals to Holland’s character and Emily. After the drugs seemed to have lost their effect on Emily, she mentions that Black’s safe probably has all of the good drugs in it. Holland’s character, Emily, and James Lightfoot (a friend since the beginning of the movie) try desperately to break into the safe and retrieve the drugs.

Eventually the safe opens and it is every drug addicts dream; loads and loads of drugs. Needless to say, they took the drugs, crashed and slept on the floor, and woke up to several loud bangs on the door. Panicked, thinking it was the police, the remaining drugs are rushed to be disposed of and flushed down the toilet. Holland’s character opens the door, and it was Coke who was playing a trick on them. He comes in, sees the damaged and emptied safe, and is very angry. He warns them that they owe him a ton of money so that he can repay Black before Black kills them all. Holland’s character comes up with the plan to rob a bank.

Wrapping up the story without spoiling too much, he robs a ton of banks in order to get money and pay Black back. He decides to rob the final bank we saw in the opening and turn himself in by asking the bank teller to push the alarm. He pays off his debts to Black, heads to the center of the street, shoots his gun twice to alert law enforcement, takes some more heroin, and is arrested. This brings us to the Epilogue.

2007-2021 we see Holland’s character in prison. He grows a thick bushy mustache and slowly becomes a happier and changed person. At the end of the movie he is released from prison, and touchingly, Emily is there to pick him up. The end!

This movie’s goal was to tell a complicated story in a simple and unique way. They put so much detail into the emotions, rather than the characters themselves or the locations. Instead of trying to remember what bank he robbed, viewers just see ‘The Bank.’ And instead of trying to remember what the doctor's name was, we see on his coat his name is ‘Dr. Whomever.’ I think this movie was made to be art. Art with the mission to make you think and pull emotions out of you. I don’t think many viewers/critics understood the movie.

This was a true story and was told beautifully by Anthony and Joe Russo. After watching ‘Cherry’ three times now, it deserves a solid 7.5 out of 10. It's possible to see why people don’t like it, and it's possible to see how it can be a challenging movie to watch, but it is unlike any movie most have ever seen. Before agreeing or disagreeing, please watch the film more than once. This allows you to take yourself out of the “first time viewing” bias and really form a stronger opinion about the film.