Digger Movie Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Digger is a sharply satirical, visually striking film anchored by Tom Cruise’s boldest performance yet, though its experimental story-within-a-story structure occasionally sacrifices clarity for ambition.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Genre: Satire, Drama
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Cast: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller
For thirty years, Tom Cruise has built his career on defying gravity, running across rooftops, climbing the world’s tallest buildings, and performing stunts most actors would never dare attempt. In Digger, he finally touches ground, quite literally picking up a shovel to dig for oil.
If the Mission Impossible franchise pushed the limits of human potential, this Alejandro Iñárritu satire drags Cruise straight into the muck of human greed instead, and somehow, it turns out to be one of the most fitting roles of his career.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a third-generation oil tycoon who approaches even the most catastrophic days with blind, stubborn optimism. When his staff warns him that his Alaska drilling operations have dislodged a massive iceberg now drifting dangerously toward Europe, he simply returns to caring for his half-dead cat, refusing to accept that the world around him is collapsing just as surely as his pet.
It is not until the crisis escalates enough to bring the US President and White House officials knocking that Rockwell is finally forced to confront the disaster he helped create. But rather than fleeing or hiding, Rockwell digs out the truth and throws it back in the faces of the very people pointing fingers at him, arguing that everyone benefiting from capitalism is just as complicit as he is.
Without giving too much away, Iñárritu layers the satire with a clever twist, revealing that the story being staged is actually a play being rehearsed in memory of real victims from a similar past disaster, with Cruise playing an actor named Richard who portrays Digger Rockwell on stage.
That added layer eventually leads to a genuinely powerful question the film poses through its characters, why use satire at all instead of simply confronting the truth directly? It is an ambitious structural choice reminiscent of Inarritu’s earlier film Birdman, and while it does not offer easy answers, it does turn Digger into something of a thoughtful love letter to the enduring power of art and performance.
Tom Cruise delivers what may genuinely be the finest performance of his career here, completely abandoning his polished action hero image for a prosthetic potbelly and an ugly, unglamorous truth at the character’s core. Riz Ahmed is equally terrific as Ganesh, Rockwell’s scientist and chief advisor, serving as the film’s lone voice of reason amid the chaos.
John Goodman chews through every scene as an appropriately over-the-top US President, while Jesse Plemons delivers a genuinely phenomenal monologue in his limited screen time. Sandra Huller, unfortunately, gets somewhat sidelined as Rockwell’s half-sister Emma, though her arc does find a satisfying emotional payoff by the film’s end.
Visually, Digger is a genuine achievement. Production designer Dennis Gassner crafts stunning, theatrical sets that shift seamlessly between a lavish old-world mansion and a raw, futuristic green room, while cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki brings real visual poetry to the film’s long takes. Composer Cosmo Sheldrake’s score adds a constant sense of urgency throughout.
Where the film stumbles is in its narrative clarity. A major twist roughly forty minutes in completely shifts the story’s direction, and while it is certainly unexpected, it also disrupts the momentum Inarritu had carefully built, leaving the film feeling confusing in stretches even for attentive viewers.
The final scene does eventually tie everything together meaningfully, but that clarity arrives later than it probably should.
In the end, Digger is a sharply satirical, visually ambitious film held back slightly by its own experimental structure, but Tom Cruise’s towering, transformative performance alone makes it well worth watching.
If you’re deciding what else to catch this week, our review of Pooja Meri Jaan, our review of Drishyam The Conclusion, and our review of Don’t Trouble The Trouble are all worth checking out too.