{"id":1236713730,"date":"2026-09-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/?p=1236713730"},"modified":"2026-09-29T10:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T17:21:14","slug":"digger-review-tom-cruise-alejandro-g-inarritu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-reviews\/digger-review-tom-cruise-alejandro-g-inarritu-1236713730\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Digger’ Review: Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu Are a Match Made in Showboating Hell in a Shallow Satire Insufferably Pleased With Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\tAt last, a climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay\u2019s Don\u2019t Look Up<\/a><\/em> seem almost innocuous. Digger<\/em> is basically what happens when you put two outsize egos together with nobody holding the reins to keep their most self-indulgent impulses in check. Piloted by a spectacularly obnoxious Tom Cruise, who evidently spent hours in the makeup chair each day to look his age, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s wannabe Dr. Strangelove<\/em> is a heavy-handed cataclysm scenario built around the blunt point that any attempt to halt global warming this late in the game is pure political theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIt\u2019s a movie that sets out to be divisive<\/a>, and no doubt many will applaud its extravagant display of what passes for audaciousness and originality. But put me in the camp of those who most definitely did not dig it. Though I\u00f1\u00e1rritu mined a fertile vein of sardonic humor in 2014\u2019s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)<\/a><\/em>, comedy has never been this grandiose director\u2019s forte. His eighth feature is so meta that you watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there\u2019s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tI was reminded of colossal misfires like Damien Chazelle\u2019s Babylon<\/a><\/em> and David O. Russell\u2019s Amsterdam<\/a><\/em>, bloated movies by directors so drunk on their exalted reputations they forgot there was an audience to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tDigger<\/em> epitomizes the difference between big swing and hubristic folly more than any film since Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Megalopolis<\/a><\/em>, another wildly ambitious bid to skewer the chaos of contemporary reality. But Coppola\u2019s film, irrespective of its fatal flaws and excesses, at least meant something in the context of his career. It also tempered its despair for humanity with illuminating glimmers of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThere\u2019s no such relief in I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s film, which boils down to, \u201cLook at the hopeless mess we\u2019re stuck in, hahaha! All we have left is great subversive art.\u201d That last part is debatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tComing after the handsomely crafted but thematically overstuffed existential navel-gazing of the 2022 Netflix feature Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths<\/a><\/em>, which was I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s answer to Fellini\u2019s Otto e mezzo<\/em>, Digger<\/em> furthers the impression that the director is now primarily interested in making films about his own genius for mythmaking, as both an artist and a truth-teller pulling away the gauze to expose the alarming quagmire of our 21st century world. Unless that anxiety is not already entrenched in your recurring thoughts \u2014 and if not, wake up \u2014 it\u2019s unlikely this film has much to tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn a performance that melds his cocky motivational speaker from Magnolia<\/em> with his belligerent, prosthetics-clad studio executive from Tropic Thunder<\/em>, Cruise plays powerful oil baron Digger Rockwell, an overbearing boor named for the shovel with which his granddaddy dug his way to a family fortune. He has the entire U.S. government in his pocket, including President Compson (John Goodman), another bellowing windbag, and enough clout to get around pesky regulations and environmental concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tFor some reason that has zero bearing on the plot, Digger loves his mangy cat and is determined to keep the ailing creature, half-blind and incontinent, alive at any cost. The shoddy feline puppet is one of the first clues that the world of Digger\u2019s palatial mansion \u2014 stuffed with hunting trophies and surrounded by sweeping landscapes \u2014 might not be exactly what it seems. The curtain rising on a proscenium stage is another, as is a lingering shot of a poster for Cassavetes\u2019 Opening Night<\/em>, held for so long I might have involuntarily groaned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut before the big reveal intended to shift our perspective on everything we have seen, including the strident overacting, Cruise\u2019s Digger swaggers from room to room barking orders in his Texas twang, his paunchy silicone dad bod adorned with cowboy boots, 10-gallon hats and bolo ties. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu seems to think this visual alone is funny, but that would require getting past the persistently dull and witless writing. Not to mention that Cruise\u2019s performance starts at an abrasive 11, leaving him nowhere to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tDigger is so used to being cocooned among yes men that he\u2019s almost affronted when his head of environmental security (Danny Kirrane) gets through on a video call from the Arctic oil field where the Rockwell workforce has been pumping 9,000 barrels a day, with nine months remaining on the company\u2019s lease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe oil tycoon does not like to be told anything he doesn\u2019t want to hear, so he\u2019s more annoyed than concerned when informed that methane gas bubbling up from the ocean floor as a result of his drilling operations has caused a rapidly expanding crack in a glacial ice bed, threatening its stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhen an explosion is reported at the drilling site, Digger is more worried about the damage to the oil rig than he is the human casualties or the massive dislodged ice shelf headed for Europe, where scientists predict its impact will trigger a tsunami and displace millions of people. That potential disaster of course is something Digger and his father before him have known about for decades (\u201cCO2 is just the fuse, methane is the bomb\u201d) but have managed to hush up thanks to bribes and backroom government deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIt\u2019s hard to find the humor in all this with a current administration so gung-ho in its \u201cDrill, baby, drill!\u201d recklessness, having neutered the EPA and scrapped regulatory oversight for fossil fuel extraction. But being unfunny is less Digger<\/em>\u2019s problem than a story that ties itself in knots trying to be clever, as a completely unconvincing big twist alters the picture and opens a window to a grim future. It also means that many of the cast from a certain point on are effectively playing dual roles, not that there\u2019s much virtuosity to admire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tScenes of laissez-faire politics leave more of a sour taste than a smile \u2014 notably when Digger summons President Compson and his senior cabinet to his home for a meeting in which he emphasizes the need to get out in front of the story and control the narrative, using the public\u2019s panic to their advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tHardass Defense Secretary Colonel Fitzgerald (Robert John Burke, basically playing George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove<\/em>) just wants to bomb the runaway iceberg. But one of the few voices of reason, scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed, also one of the few performances allowed any nuance), speaks up to explain how that would set off a whole new chain of disasters, refusing to sugarcoat the awful truth for the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe movie\u2019s best scene, which gives Cruise an opportunity to flex his acting muscles while being simultaneously combative and charming in Digger\u2019s folksy manner, has him addressing the European Parliament in an assembly hall that evokes the Roman Senate. By owning the global crisis unleashed by oil billionaires and a complicit government, Digger causes an uproar. But he hurls the politicians\u2019 anger right back at them, declaring that, \u201cOil is the mother\u2019s milk of Earth,\u201d and calling the current predicament the price of doing business with a commodity that all of them want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tNone of this ever accumulates much weight, however, since the conflicts are all dulled by the one-note absurdity of the farcical plotting. Even the few characters willing to stand up to Digger, like his truculent younger sister Emma (a very shouty Sandra H\u00fcller, wasted), his level-headed assistant Lina (Emma D\u2019Arcy) and Vice President Fryman (Michael Stuhlbarg), are drowned out in all the racket. Jesse Plemons plays a global intel company owner with a behind-the-scenes role, but the actor remains stuck on the sidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tConsidering the grim future scenario these remarkably unpleasant two hours dump on us, and the exhausting effect of all its aggressive auteurist grandstanding \u2014 blame I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and his co-writers, not Cruise \u2014 Digger<\/em> ultimately just prompts a worn-down shrug. Shot in VistaVision and reuniting the director with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, it looks suitably big and imposing but is less interesting for its visual textures than for Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson\u2019s elaborate production design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe IMAX Countdown that precedes the film reads: \u201cWatch a movie or be a part of one.\u201d It\u2019s difficult to imagine mainstream audiences ever wanting to be a part of this bludgeoning ordeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra H\u00fcller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons also star in this dark comedy about a blowhard oil tycoon facing a global catastrophe of his own making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1223286,"featured_media":1236646653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"override_post_title":"","override_post_excerpt":"","authors":[],"contributors":[],"styled_by":[],"_image_credit":"","_wp_attachment_image_alt":"","pmc_selected_wwd_video_media":"","pmc_top_video_source":"","pmc_top_video_duration":"","wwd_top_video_source":"","wwd_top_video_duration":"","pmc_selected_featured_media":"","pmc_selected_video_media":"","pmc_selected_variety_video_media":"","variety_top_video_source":"","variety_top_video_duration":"","pmc_featured_media_has_alt_text":true,"_pmc_featured_animated_media_id":0,"_pmc_featured_video_override_data":"","_pmc_featured_video_override_url":"","_pmc_featured_video_response_data":"","pmc-gallery-linked-gallery":{},"pmc_list_item_description":"","primary_category":"","primary_vertical":"","_mt_pmc_exclude_from_seo":"","_pmc_opengraph_title":"","_pmc_opengraph_description":"","categories":59,"subcategories":114,"thr-review-summary-credits":"Release date<\/strong>: Friday, Oct. 2
Cast<\/strong>: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra H\u00fcller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Emma D\u2019Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Robert John Burke
Director<\/strong>: Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu
Screenwriters<\/strong>: Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicol\u00e1s Giacobone, Sabina Berman
","thr-full-credit":"Release date: Friday, Oct. 2
Production companies: Legendary Pictures
Distribution: Warner Bros.
Cast: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra H\u00fcller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Emma D\u2019Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman, Mercedes Hern\u00e1ndez, Danny Kirrane, James Dryden
Director: Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu
Screenwriters: Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicol\u00e1s Giacobone, Sabina Berman; story by Berman, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and Jez Butterworth
Producers: Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Mary Parent, Tom Cruise, Michael Sharp
Executive producers: Joshua Grode, Sabine Berman, Jez Butterworth, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicol\u00e1s Giacobone, Emmanuel Lubezki, Pete Chiappetta, Andrew Lary, Anthony Tittanegro
Director of photography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Production designers: Dennis Gassner, Richard Johnson
Costume designer: Jacqueline West
Music: Cosmo Sheldrake
Editors: Connor O\u2019Neill, Stephen Mirrione
Prosthetic makeup designer: Kazu Hiro
Visual effects supervisors: Rich McBride, Jeff White
Casting: Francine Maisler
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