Cherry

After the interplanetary thrills of their Marvel Studios movies, the Russo brothers fall awkwardly to earth with this heavy-handed issues drama. A forced bid to earn prestige respect, the film's main hook is Spider-Man swinger Tom Holland's committed lead performance as Cherry, a nervy Ohio everyman who joins the army and returns home with PTSD. Along with his lover (Ciara Bravo), Cherry soon lapses into drug addiction, then turns to bank robbery to pay for the highs. Drawn from real-life veteran Nico Walker's semi-autobiographical novel, Cherry mixes faux-literary chapter headings and wincingly on-the-nose dialogue to chart the couple's strenuously grim descent into hell - and its stabs at social commentary are equally blunt. The Russos try to charge up the predictable plot with flashy stylisations - freeze frames, slow-motion - but these cod-Scorsese distractions grow wearisome long before the operatic, self-important finale.