Second movie in a row for me featuring Tom Holland. After Chaos Walking, that was quite enjoyable to me as a fantasy movie and that despite the low ratings it got, this time Cherry, a powerful movie about PTSD but mostly about addiction, heroin addiction to be more precise. Not as powerful as The Basketball Diaries but certainly good enough to keep you far away from heroin after watching it. Tom Holland just nailed it here, very good performance playing his character. Ciara Bravo also did a good job. The destructive relationship they are in, the issues that both have, it's all well filmed and keeps you interested in the entire story. A long movie but never boring. Good to excellent cinematography, great cast, great story, what else can you ask for? Again an underrated movie with Tom Holland.

The film opens with Cherry (Tom Holland) as a bank robber. The bulk of the film takes us up to that point and then beyond. Summary plot spoiler: Cherry goes to college. Meets Emily (Ciara Bravo) Joins army. Married. Iraq. PTSD. Drug addict. Bank robber. Prison rehab. Happily ever after. While it had some good scenes for the most part it was tedious to watch as the film dragged on. I was way too long. Tom Holland just wasn't that good or interesting.

Guide: F-word. Implied sex. No nudity.

It's a bit of a tough film to review, this one. On the one hand it is an incredibly downbeat mix of depression, drug addiction, wholesale societal neglect and human deficiencies that make it very difficult to empathise - on any level - with the characters. On the other, it offers us a truly enthralling performance from Tom Holland as the eponymous character. The premiss being that "Cherry" is a bit of a drop-out whom, but for his love of "Emily" (Ciara Bravo) has little of value in his life. He enlists in the US army and finds some succour in the camaraderie and discipline that offers - despite the horrors of the war in Iraq, during which he serves as a medic. When he returns, and reunited with his now wife, he struggles to get to grips with a community that neither needs nor wants him. His jobs are few and far between, unchallenging, and as his obvious PTSD begins to dominate his personality which all creates the perfect Petrie dish for the spiralling vortex of anger, despair and hard drugs involving both of them that starts to take charge of their lives. Funding their expensive habit proves little problem for him - he merely takes to, almost comically, robbing banks. At times this is dark and gritty offering us a really potent assessment of just how thoughtlessly a nation treats those who travel the world fighting in it's name, and it is not devoid of some pretty sardonic humour, but for much of the rest of the time the story has a relentlessly bleak and predictable nature to it. I could have been doing with more of Bravo's character, too - her frustration as an emotionally invested bystander who is dragged into this abyss could have seen extra development, particularly as she is the lone stabilising influence on her wayward husband. I haven't a puritanical bone in my body but please, when will writers stop assuming that expletive-ridden dialogue provides some sort of substitute for character development or tension? It doesn't - it merely demonstrates a lack of skill on their part to allow rich (rather then ripe) language to help develop the characters. Though I did not expect to love them, and "Cherry" himself isn't inherently a bad man, the decline into their narcotic stupor is thrust upon us to quickly and all too easily - curious given that this film is very (far too, in my view) long. Newton Thomas Sigel has worked well with the Russo's to create a film that reeks of authenticity, but I am afraid it's just all been done before... It does demonstrate ably, though, that young Mr. Holland has more to offer than just a cute bum in Lycra, and like Dan Radcliffe - that he is not afraid to take his career in radically differing directions which has got to augur well for the future of his career and our entertainment.