'Digger' Reviewer Pushes Back Against Critics — SkimNews
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- Jake Bittle published a negative review of 'Digger' in the same magazine last week, calling the film 'ugly, loud, and unpleasant'
- Alejandro Iñárritu wrote and directed 'Digger' as a climate-change allegory featuring Tom Cruise as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell and John Goodman as a ghoulish US president who greenlights Arctic drilling
- The film's plot centers on Rockwell ignoring scientists' warnings about a methane-leaking Arctic ice crack; an explosion then sends an ice shelf drifting toward Europe
- Halfway through, the film reveals Cruise's Rockwell is actually actor Curtis Markson rehearsing a play about the climate catastrophe, with Riz Ahmed and Goodman playing supporting roles
- Sophie Wilde plays Hannah, a theatre director insisting the play should comfort climate-displaced families, while Markson agonizes over whether the disaster reads as farce or tragedy
- Iñárritu, the only filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Picture twice, told the New York Times the film 'is not perfect' but added, 'I like taking risks'
Why it matters: With poor box-office numbers stacking up alongside negative reviews, Iñárritu — the only two-time Best Picture Oscar winner — is betting his auteur reputation on a satire whose central thesis is that art may not be able to stop a climate catastrophe in time. Cruise's meta-performance as an actor debating that very question with his director is the film's sharpest asset, and the point critics appear to have missed.
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