Digger Review: Tom Cruise Is Unhinged In An Ambitious But Frustrating Mess

Can movie studios please stop counting the actual premises of movies as "spoilers" unmentionable in reviews? Critics had this frustration in the spring with A24 not wanting anyone to know "The Drama" was about a planned school shooting, even though the movie plays this less as a "twist" than as the basic inciting incident (my "spoiler" review for Looper ended up running day of release). Now I must struggle to review "Digger" without saying what the actual story is about.

To give Warner Bros.' publicity team some sympathy, the secret twist in "Digger" is more of an actual twist than the one in "The Drama." But it's still a twist within the first 30 minutes of the film, so this isn't the ordinary courtesy of not spoiling an ending, but a difficulty of not being able to say what the movie is doing throughout — and making it even harder to talk about how this twist basically turns the story into a mess.

It's extra annoying because, if "Digger" was just the movie they're selling in the marketing – an eccentric "Dr. Strangelove"-style satirical climate disaster movie – I'd dig it. I was looking forward to this movie. I know this isn't the most popular opinion in all social circles: there's the small-but-vocal crowd of hipster film podcasters who hate everything Alejandro G. Iñárritu does (sorry dudes, "Birdman" still rocks), a larger crowd of people creeped out by Tom Cruise (and I get their concerns), and those just too exhausted to enjoy a movie about wealthy jerks ruining the world (to which I can only offer assurance that this movie hates those guys as much as you do). But when "Digger" is actually being the movie it appeared to be, I mostly liked it. The problems come when it's trying to do more than that, in a way that ends up paradoxically making everything feel like less ...

If nothing else, Alejandro G. Iñárritu movies look amazing, and "Digger" is no exception. It operates in a heightened mode of theatricality, with lengthy farcical scenes playing out in enormously-scaled sets packed with elaborate, often humorous details. The washed-out colors and extreme angles of Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography make it all a bit off-putting, but that feeling is fitting in emphasizing the sickness of this society on the verge of collapse. The miniatures and practical effects used for its outdoor sets and disaster scenes are simply awesome.

To talk around the elephant in the room, the big problem with "Digger" might be that Iñárritu is a bit too in love with showing off his most awesome effects, while simultaneously not trusting audiences to be able to accept this heightened style without some form of explanation. So the script (by Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman, with story credit for Jez Butterworth) comes up with an additional layer of explanation that, on paper, could have actually been pretty cool. And it is cool, in individual images, but in a way that doesn't actually make any logical sense. If this was a more abstract Lynchian sort of movie, that lack of explanation wouldn't bother me, but "Digger" really feels the need to explain itself ... and to argue over the validity of its own existence.

Not content to simply be an angry in-your-face satire about billionaires screwing over the rest of the world for profit and making problems worse with every attempted easy fix, "Digger" ends up becoming something of a debate over whether such satire has any value in the face of tragic reality. This is an interesting debate to have, but in the context of a film that is still trying to have its cake while eating it, it feels painfully self-absorbed. Audiences will debate whether the final takeaway is self-deprecating or self-congratulatory, but either way, it's so far up its own ass that it can't breathe.

So how is Tom Cruise in his first role in ages that's focused on acting rather than nearly killing himself on set? He's clearing putting his all into playing Digger Rockwell, an over-the-top cartoon of a Texan oil tycoon. If his energy gets deflated at all, it's by the twist, which forces a certain deflation to everything. Cruise is funny enough with a somewhat one-note character (the twist offers another note for him to play, though a less memorable one), but this won't be the role that wins him the Oscar he's clearly desperate for, and he's outshined by other members of the "Digger" ensemble.

In terms of comedy, John Goodman is way funnier than Cruise in his performance as President Compson. Goodman avoids a direct impression of any one president, instead blending hints of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and George W. Bush into an all-too-familiar portrayal of a dying jingoistic leader holding on to power way longer than he ever should have. On the dramatic front, meanwhile, it's Riz Ahmed as Digger's climate scientist Dr. Ganesh who most impressed me. There's a moment where Ganesh, who's long struggled to balance stating the facts with soft-pedaling them for his career, gets permission to say how he really feels about Digger from the man himself. The resulting monologue is stunning, a pure expression of rage at the greenwashing system he took part in. Digger gets his own big monologue afterward, but it's the catharsis of Ganesh's testimony that stuck with me most.

The messages of "Digger" are generally righteous (among other things, it feels good to watch a big studio movie that truly hates AI). That doesn't equal a good movie — I'm not gonna pretend "Don't Look Up" wasn't an overextended "Saturday Night Live" bit just because it understood climate denial. But combining that quality with incredible technical achievements, some laughs, and a daring energy that, if nothing else, prevents it from ever getting boring, should be reason to recommend "Digger." So it pains me that the overall construction of "Digger" is just so fundamentally broken, its self-indulgence so eye-rolling, that I can't in good conscience tell anyone seeking a good movie to buy a ticket. Now if you're seeking a very interesting failure ... you're in for an experience.

"Digger" opens in theaters on October 2.