By John Corrado
Digger, the latest film from Birdman and The Revenant filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, stars Tom Cruise in the titular role of Digger Rockwell, an aging Texas oil tycoon.
Cruise, appearing in old man makeup, has been the main selling point of Iñárritu’s film. Returning to non-action roles, Digger gives the actor the platform to let loose and show off both his dramatic and comedic range. It’s a staggering performance from a genuine movie star.
But, beyond just being a showcase for Cruise, Digger is also one of the most divisive big studio movies in recent memory. It’s an intentionally polarizing film that has been equally described as being brilliant and a mess. And, after seeing it, both reactions are conceivable. But I am very much in the camp that admires and applauds the ambition and wild swings that Iñárritu takes here.
This is a fascinating film both in its structure and themes. It’s a blazing, often heightened mix of Strangelovian satire and surrealistic dark comedy, that seeks to challenge and provoke as much as entertain. The film begins with Cruise’s Digger, who is profoundly attached to his aging, dilapidated pet cat Maggie (an obvious animatronic puppet), being informed that one of his oil drilling projects has caused an environmental disaster.
There’s been an explosion off one of his rigs, sending a massive ice shelf hurtling through the North Sea and towards Europe. This potential mass casualty event leaves Digger scrambling to work with his head of environmental safety Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), to assess the impending catastrophic damage if they don’t figure out a way to stop it.
Digger is also working in tandem with the corrupt Commander in Chief, President Compson (John Goodman), to come up with a political spin that will shift blame away from his administration, who relaxed regulations in order to allow Digger to drill. It’s a great role for Goodman, who is very funny as the incompetent, corrupt president, allowing him to channel the penchant for comic absurdity he’s previously shown in his collaborations with the Coen Brothers.
This is a movie not only born out of decades of warnings about climate catastrophe, but also a global pandemic, one-and-a-half Trump administrations, and a lame duck Biden presidency. The fact that there are also throwbacks to Bush era politics (i.e., a thrown shoe) suggests Iñárritu’s scope is even more vast than any one topic or target.
But, Digger is not just a climate change movie. The larger themes at play are about truth versus political spin, ideas best exemplified in a handful of fascinating conversations between Digger and Dr. Ganesh. It’s also, in many ways, a response to films like Don’t Look Up and a meta-commentary on satire itself, and the nature of wanting to laugh through our anger while the world burns.
Iñárritu could’ve made a straight-forward satire, but instead he’s made something that is guaranteed to spark debate and discussion, including about whether or not it all works. But the bold swings that Digger takes all add up to a cinematic experience that is frequently entrancing to watch unfold. Even the first act’s exaggerated, over-the-top comedic tone all clicks into place as soon as we realize what Iñárritu is going for. It’s rare to see a movie where even the choices that could be seen at first as questionable get retroactively corrected as it goes along.
The craftwork is also undeniably impressive throughout. The production design is consistently captivating, with every new set drawing us in, like a dark version of a Wes Anderson movie. The cinematography by Iñárritu’s frequent collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki is visually striking, and features some thrilling camera movements. There is even clear intentionality behind the film’s often drab, grey colour grade.
At the centre of it all is Tom Cruise, delivering a tour de force performance that allows him to grapple with his own legacy as a performer and movie star. Cruise is thrilling to watch throughout every one of the film’s tonal shifts. But the different layers to his performance, beyond just being a comic portrayal of a borderline cartoonish oil tycoon, are are what makes his work here really stand out.
The centrepiece of Cruise’s performance is a show-stopping monologue he delivers in front of a courtroom partway through. This sequence, which unfolds in a single take with the camera circling around the actor as he delivers Digger’s barn-burner of a speech, leads to a bravura showcase of both Cruise’s performance and Iñárritu’s filmmaking. The way that Iñárritu uses the background actors in the scene is also quite impressive.
While Digger is the Tom Cruise show, this is also very much an ensemble film. Ahmed really impresses in moments when he goes head to head with Cruise, impressively holding his own in scenes sitting across from the actor. Goodman often steals the show, while Michael Stuhlbarg does some nice, more subtle work as Compson’s sheepish VP. Jesse Plemons is fascinating to watch in a role that takes centre stage more as the film goes on, including a pivotal scene late in the game that he knocks out of the park. The cast also includes Sandra Hüller, who makes the most of her limited screen time as Digger’s sister.
This is a film that is almost daring the audience to reject it, calling out hypocrisy on all sides and the self-congratulatory artists who mistake art and activism. It’s also a film that you can’t even properly talk about without spoiling it (which I won’t do here), which basically requires you to actually see it if you want to be part of the conversation. The marketing now leaning in to these polarized reactions is really the only way to sell what is otherwise an almost unsellable film.
The film has taken a critical drubbing, and is already one of the biggest box office flops of all time, not least of which because Warner Bros. forked over a budget of somewhere between $140-180 million to make it. But Iñárritu will surely get the last laugh when Digger continues to be debated and talked about, and it’s almost guaranteed to reevaluated in due time as a divisive but no less daring and thrilling work of art. I’m confidently (and somewhat defiently) already there in calling it that.
