the first look at Avengers: Endgame director Joe and Anthony Russo's new movie Cherry, starring Tom Holland, has been revealed. The film sees the Spider-Man actor play a veteran whose PTSD has led him to an opioid addiction that he funds through bank robberies.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, the Russos talked more about what we can expect from the movie. “[Holland’s character, Cherry] travels a great distance over a 15-year period,” Joe explained. “The movie’s broken up into six chapters that reflect those different periods, and each one has a different tone. It’s shot with different lenses, different production design. One’s got magical realism. Another chapter is absurdism. Another is horror… There’s a bit of gonzo in it. It’s raw in its tone. He’s a character in an existential crisis.”
Welcome to a peek inside Cherry’s world created by the @Russo_Brothers and inspired by the best selling novel of the same name. Cherry is a darkly humorous, coming-of-age story featuring @TomHolland1996 and @ciarabravo. In theaters Feb 26, and on the @AppleTV app on Mar 12. pic.twitter.com/4jtQMwbTwNNovember 24, 2020
For the Russos, the story is also close to home: “Ohio is unfortunately at ground zero in the fight against the opioid crisis," Joe said. "And we’ve got a lot of people in our family that have either passed on or died from the crisis, or are struggling with their current addiction. So, this is a very, very personal movie for us.”
The directors also had high praise for Holland, with Anthony commenting: “He’s just so likeable. We knew for this part we were going to need someone of Tom’s charisma to keep the audience from shutting down during the darker parts of the film. The darkest, most difficult sides of that character, he really embraced them and ran at them and tried to give them life within himself in a way that not a lot of people could pull off.”
As for the film itself, Joe talked about what he hopes Cherry accomplishes: “This is a movie that’s supposed to define the experience of having PTSD, the experience of being addicted to opioids,” he said. “And the mission of the film is to generate empathy, not to generate disdain, not to indict. It was critical that you empathise with his struggle and his journey because a lot of people are going through this, and they’re having a very human experience. I think empathy is in incredibly short supply right now in the world. And it’s a tragedy.”
Cherry releases on February 26, 2021, in cinemas, and March 12, 2021, on Apple TV Plus, with a screenplay penned by the directors’ sister Angela Russo-Otstot and based on Nico Walker’s novel of the same name. Until then, check out our guide to the must-see movies still coming to cinemas in 2020.
