Review: Iñárritu's 'Digger' With Tom Cruise Is a Disappointing — SkimNews
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- Tom Cruise stars as 'Digger' Rockwell, an ageing, paunchy Texan oil tycoon whose company's Arctic drilling causes a Manhattan-sized ice floe to break away and head toward Norway, described by the reviewer as carrying a Stetson borrowed from Slim Pickens in Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.
- Riz Ahmed plays cringingly polite chief scientist Ganesh, who has been warning Digger about the irresponsible drilling practices that ultimately cause the crisis, while John Goodman appears as gaunt, unwell President Compson at a White House crisis meeting.
- Sandra Hüller and Michael Stuhlbarg are left with underdeveloped roles — Hüller as Digger's half-sister with 'next to nothing to do,' and Stuhlbarg wasted as a 'very bland' vice-president the reviewer suspects were trimmed in editing.
- Cruise's set-piece moment is a UN megaparliament scene where Digger lacerates global hypocrisy on oil consumption, though the reviewer notes his claim that renewables and nuclear are 'simply not viable' goes unchallenged in the film.
- The reviewer compares the film to Adam McKay's Don't Look Up and finds it ends up 'in a postmodern hole,' with a sudden twist enclosed 'within inverted commas' that undermines rather than deepens its eco-satire.
- Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Dennis Gassner are credited by the reviewer as the film's chief value, conjuring 'dreamlike and disturbing images, distorted and bulging from the screen.'
Why it matters: A new film from an Oscar-winning director carrying early awards buzz becomes a cautionary case for suspending critical objection in the name of climate relevance. With Cruise in a prosthetic-heavy transformative turn and a supporting cast of major names (Ahmed, Goodman, Hüller, Stuhlbarg), the project's commercial and prestige stakes are high even as the review calls it the year's most disappointing film.
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