Review: ‘Digger’ isn’t what you think it is

Digger isn’t the movie you think it is. From the trailers and TV ads, it looks like a big, broad satirical comedy with Tom Cruise in old-age makeup and a fat suit playing a George “Dubya” Texas oil man in the vein of Don’t Look Up or Veep. Though that’s certainly a big part of it, Alejandro Iñárritu’s (Birdman, The Revenant) new film is so much more, including a showstopping work of cinematic production, a meta-analysis of political satire, and a reckoning with the power and limits of art to heal us.

Tom Cruise’s title character is a third-generation oil man who hides away in a Citizen Kane-esque Xanadu palace of ornate detail and stuffed hunting trophies so numerous that dead animals line the ceiling. The only thing he seems to care about is his hysterically decrepit cat, whom he flies veterinarians from around the country in daily to keep her alive one more day. He ignores his business, other than the profits, until he literally can’t, when his company ends up causing a glacier the size of Boston to break off from Greenland and head straight for Europe. 

The potential death of hundreds of thousands forces Digger out of quasi-retirement and, with his meek head environmental scientist, Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), to try to find a way to avoid total catastrophe while dealing with the moronic cabinet of President Compson (John Goodman), a cross between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump with an even greater god complex who’s battling anal cancer and whose advisers fawn over and pray in tongues for his success. 

Most performances start at a high level of ridiculousness and go up from there in scenery-chewing, which may feel unbearable depending on your comedic preferences. Then, around the 20-30 minute mark, as I started to wonder if I could take a whole movie this manic, a wild break happens that changes everything. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but for the rest of the movie you will either be on the edge of your seat, paying careful attention to every choice, or dismiss it all as pretentious bullshit.

Iñárritu broke through to American audiences with a series of “everything’s connected” movies like Babel and 21 Grams that were all the rage in the 2000s. When he seemed like a one-trick pony, Iñárritu returned with Birdman, a simulated one-take of an off-the-rails theater production that won critical acclaim, including Best Picture. Then he went in the exact opposite direction with The Revenant, where he abandoned artifice to shoot in the snow with only natural light. I never know how I feel about his films, or about him as a director, but I can’t deny it’s exciting to watch him follow whatever creative whim comes to him. 

Digger is a constantly fascinating watch, in part because of the massive scale of filmmaking on display and the many subjects it tries to tackle. An internet rumor claimed Digger was secretly a musical—it’s definitely not, but it’s certainly theatrical. Every part of the production design is immaculately detailed and thought through, and the director pulls out all the stops for an exquisitely crafted, lengthy one-take section where Digger delivers a scathing critique of human hypocrisy to a European Union-esque council ready to tar and feather him. 

There’s no way in hell Digger could have been made for an estimated $160 million without Tom Cruise’s presence. Cruise appears to relish breaking out of the Mission: Impossible mold, doing more straight-up acting than he has in decades, while disappearing behind layers of makeup and prosthetics to the point where you often forget you’re watching one of Hollywood’s few remaining big stars. Most of the other big players in the star-studded cast are neglected in the film, including Sandra Hüller (Project Hail Mary), who has little to do as Digger’s half-sister, but Cruise’s role is so huge that everyone feeling like an afterthought to one man’s astronomical gravitational pull isn’t much of an issue. 

This is clearly a divisive film that you will either become obsessed with or outright dismiss. It’s built upon so many intersecting layers that feel like they could collapse at any second, taking so many chances and risks in order to try to rise to the absurdity of our current era, where, to live our daily lives, we have to normalize never-ending stupidity, genocide, and ecological collapse in order to keep putting food on the table. 

How can art even critique that? What is art’s purpose in a time like this? To make us laugh at how ridiculous life has become, be a focal point for our rage, or help us understand the awful men who rule over us to satisfy their unquenchable greed with so little thought for the rest of humanity? I don’t think Digger or Iñárritu know. I don’t even know if this is a masterpiece or total trash, but it’s an exhilarating experience either way.