What We Learned from The Trailer for “Cherry”

This is going to be a switch from seeing Tom Holland as a hero to Tom Holland as a bank robber. A quick search, just in case one misses it in the trailer, reveals that Holland is a young man known as Cherry that enlists in the US Army and develops a serious opioid addiction, which he starts robbing banks to fund as he obviously loses control of the fight and has to keep getting more and more in order to feed the habit. From the start, the movie appears a bit bleak as even the happy moments appear to be tinged with something that might be called a hint of foreshadowing since there’s none of the easy, loose element that might otherwise tell people that this is a happy movie or something that will give them hope. There are some positive notes, but the moment that Cherry goes into the army it becomes little more than a kaleidoscope of images that give the viewer the feeling that things are more than a little messed up, and that Cherry is a man that is spiraling out of control and straight down the metaphorical drain. There have been plenty of movies like this in the past, with the same kind of themes and messages that have been aimed at the viewer in a way that tells a story and conveys a warning all at once, but in Cherry the chaotic jumble of images that make up the trailer appears to send the message that things are going to go from happy and calm to worse, to even worse, and possibly to a place that many people wouldn’t want to visit or revisit.

It does feel as though quite a few people are going to have to sit back and absorb the idea that Holland will be playing a character that is just as uncertain of himself as Peter Parker in the Spider-Man movies but is in a very different place than the young hero. Not only is he a regular human, but he’s a human being that has encountered something just as deadly as any supervillain, a crippling addiction that many upon many individuals have had to deal with over the course of their lives. Drug addiction is something that, in movies kind of fails to come across with the type of realism that is felt a little too much in real life. Quite a few people could tell the tale of addiction, and many of them would likely look at this movie and feel a mild tingle at the very least down their spine as they remember what it was to be, or to be around, an addict.

The tale this might tell of a soldier coming home with a severe addiction is one that’s been told over and over throughout the years since this type of thing is unfortunate but common in some cases as veterans returning home, especially combat veterans, that have turned to various substances to quell the images in their heads or the noises that they hear from their days in the field, are often looked upon in many different ways. Some would look upon them with pity, others with scorn. Some might try to help them and make things worse, others might urge them to dig themselves out of the holes they’ve created. There are ways to deal with PTSD and the effects it can cause, and there are ways to deal with drug addiction, but each case is bound to be different, and every reaction an individual can give is going to be something unique to that individual. Just looking at the trailer would indicate that there’s a breakdown in communication between Cherry and those that are trying to help him fight his addiction since robbing banks is perhaps one of the most dangerous things a person can take to in the pursuit of money. The hope is that the movie will show and describe, as it appears to, that the type of addiction that forces a person’s hand will be able to get them to do anything. In some instances, people will steal from those they care about just to keep feeding the habit. Addiction is not pretty, and so far from the trailer, it would appear that it won’t be glamorized.

The kind of attention given to a movie such as this is necessary when it comes to getting things right and showing the story in such a way that it doesn’t intentionally anger anyone since the subject at hand is actually kind of a sensitive one depending on who a person speaks to since addiction is a very personal thing. But so far, from the trailer, it would appear that Cherry is going to be a story that will elevate Tom Holland’s career in a big way if it’s successful.