Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Writer: Sabina Berman, Jez Butterworth, Alexander Dinelaris
Stars: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman
Synopsis: The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.
Having just gotten out of a screening of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, I have to explain what the hell I just saw. First, let’s make no mistake: Digger marks Tom Cruise’s return as an actor, with a wholly original performance that abandons the high-wattage movie-star charisma he has fine-tuned for decades through franchises like Mission: Impossible and Top Gun.
Cruise is jaw-dropping here, delivering one of the best performances of his career: a deranged, powder-keg turn that is an absolute knockout. Do you think I am lying? Just sit back and watch the Hollywood legend play a manic and vulgar force of nature who eats a big bowl of ego, profanity, and chaotic self-belief. Cruise’s Digger makes Les Grossman look downright domesticated.
This is the kind of turn from the man who was robbed of an Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July and so good in the scene-stealing small role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Full of piss and vinegar, seething with caustic toxicity and sleazy allure, Cruise savagely does not so much set aside his movie star image as set fire to it.
If only Digger were tighter and more laser-focused, you could have something that goes beyond being one of Cruise’s finest works and all that Oscar hype.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a wealthy oil tycoon who will spare no expense to save his decomposing cat but will let the world go to hell in a tightly sealed oil drum, which apparently is priceless. One example occurs when his team on the ground and scientists in Greenland tell him a crack in an iceberg has widened to thirty feet, with oil bubbling to the surface. Rockwell ignores emails, messages, and video conferences, choosing one path: nothing.
Digger simply will not allow any environmental protection worker he pays to serve as a failsafe against progress, which, to him, means destroying the planet to drill for black gold on his dime. He makes this clear to Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), another scientist Digger tolerates on his shoulder.
From there, Iñárritu’s script, co-written with Alexander Dinelaris (The Revenant), Nicolás Giacobone (Birdman), and Sabina Berman (Gloria), gives the film a Dr. Strangelove feel. Except, the film is more enjoyable if you stop worrying and learn to enjoy the chaos. The film’s political bent becomes almost overwrought, as John Goodman’s President Thompson, a Trump-like figure, becomes a puppet to Digger’s Musk-like supervillain.
Then, the movie takes an early turn, as Iñárritu introduces a plot twist that I wish had been saved for the final few scenes. Instead of tightening the satire, it sends Digger into a stretch of meta-filmmaking that feels overly ambitious rather than insightful or eye-opening. The choice fights the original entertaining absurdity instead of adding to it.
Yet, by the end, Digger is unlike anything Iñárritu has done before. The eclectic filmmaker operates in a wonderfully strange space: an eccentric, darkly comic piece of cinematic theater, meticulously composed and stomach-turningly deadpan. Think Coen brothers, with a Wes Anderson style, and seen through Iñárritu’s increasingly raw and feverish existential lens that is profound, if not heavy-handed.
Sometimes, you just need a film willing to go completely off the rails before it strikes oil.
You can watch Digger exclusively in theaters starting October 2nd!
