"Digger"

☆☆☆☆

For months, Digger has been so wildly hyped and also so shrouded in mystery that it had developed a reputation even before anyone saw it. Some claimed it was a secret musical, others that its run time was close to four hours, and many, many people said it was a colossal failure.

As with many myths and urban legends, none of those things turned out to be true. Digger is not a musical, though it contains one scene that ventures close to that mark; it's only about two hours long; and it's anything but a failure.

It's also not an outright success, and there will be plenty of people who won't be able to stand it, not even a little bit. Its director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, directed the Oscar-winning Birdman, which many found brilliant and I found pretentious. The opposite may prove to the case here, though the split may be similar: on one side will be people who think the whole thing is an unsuccessful overreach, an obvious and unsuccessful attempt at satire; on the other will be people taken by the performances and by the unexpected and bold surprise the movie springs on viewers.

In fact that revelation (I'd be hesitant to call it a twist) comes into play not just once but twice, and on the second appearance it deepens the film immeasurably and recontextualizes everything that has been happening, even the opening credits. The most frustrating part about discussing the film with someone who hasn't seen it is keeping that revelation a surprise—not because knowing it ruins the film, but because its appearance throws everything into such a different light.

Digger is, above everything else, a satire. And satire is, as George S. Kaufman famously said, "what closes on Saturday night." That is, satire rarely works. A lot of people will feel it doesn't work here, but I'm not one of them, even if the movie and its performers can never quite settle on the right tone. (And that might not be a mistake.)

Tom Cruise finds the tone well, though, and if a cynical view is that he's made Digger to show off his acting chops, the truth is: it works. In manic, well-past-middle-aged oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, Cruise has found a character that embraces his own larger-than-life mystique and allows him to deconstruct it. By the time Digger ends, Cruise has done something many actors never do: he's convinced us he really is the character we're watching.

That can't really be said for others in the cast, especially the overly outré John Goodman, tonally inconsistent Michael Stuhlbarg, and radically underused Sandra Hüller. Each seems to have walked in from a different movie.

Goodman, channeling the spirit of George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, is the U.S. president at some unknown time in the near future, and Stuhlbarg is his vice president. They meet with Digger Rockwell after learning that a massive glacier in Greenland where the U.S., through Rockwell's company, has been drilling for oil (yes, the parallels are that obvious). The glacier, warns Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) will hit Europe and cause massive flooding. Which it does. And Digger has to accept responsibility.

In one of the movie's most captivating scenes, he delivers a blistering and outrageous speech that implicates the audience itself in the climate crisis. Cruise is brilliant, the writing — by Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, from a story by Iñárritu, Berman and playwright Jez Butterworth — is sharp and angry, and the movie turns into something so wildly over-the-top it borders on surreal.

It's in this scene that Cruise, though excellent, makes us doubt our commitment to Digger, who seems charismatic, perhaps, but a horrible human being. If that's your feeling, too, stick with it, because Digger is about do to something wild.

Whether that something works will be open to interpretation and personal taste. I think it does, aided by Plemons and Sophie Wild, who probably won't get the credit she deserves for helping make Digger work.

This won't be a movie for all tastes. To judge whether it will work for you, consider your own reaction to the 2022 satire Triangle of Sadness, which some people hated even as it was nominated for Best Picture. (And if you've never seen that film, you might not be in the right audience demographic for Digger.)

If you're willing to meet it halfway, you may find Digger bold and memorable. And if not, you may have a pretty miserable time.

Viewed October 2, 2026 — AMC Century City

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