Substance once again gets short shrift in Alejandro Iñárritu's stylish mess Digger
The Tom Cruise comedy is a cautionary tale about the destructive force of one's man ego, which its director could have paid better attention to.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Tom Cruise may be among the last of the old-school movie stars, but lately it seems like his career has been on autopilot. With action movie after action movie, especially those in the Mission Impossible franchise and Cruise’s unearthed IP like Top Gun and Days Of Glory, it’s as if the man is turning in variations of the same performance we’ve seen before. It’s hard not to disappoint audiences that way and, as we saw with Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, it is possible to underwhelm them with too much of the same. He is, at least, on a whole different frequency in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s lumbering Digger, often recalibrating the film’s orbit around his character and sometimes rescuing it from its own outsized ambitions.
“Digger” Rockwell (Cruise) is a wealthy Texas oil man whose business has gone global. He begins his day caring for his dying cat, a pathetic creature that has long outlived its shelf life because Digger is used to getting his way at any cost. His morning routine is interrupted by terrible news out of Greenland, where his equipment has caused a glacier shelf to break off and crash into continental Europe, causing widespread destruction and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Summoned to a crowded war room including the President (John Goodman), a team of scientists lead by Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), and other high-ranking staff, Digger faces his toughest challenge yet: spinning the truth as global warming encroaches onto everyone’s doorsteps.
In opposition to the majority of Cruise’s play-it-safe role choices, Iñárritu has made a name for himself pursuing idiosyncratic works, to mixed results. No two of his movies look the same. From his international breakout with Amores Perros in 2000, Iñárritu announced himself as an auteur who pursued layered characters, often in parallel storylines. He returns to some of those interests again in Digger, following directly in the footsteps of his 2014 film, Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance). Teaming up with yet another celebrated American movie star, he gives them one of their meatiest, least tethered roles in years. Both Michael Keaton and Cruise make the most of their movies’ zany premises, but in both cases, Iñárritu steals the spotlight. In trying to prove his cleverness with various cinematographic tricks, substance once again gets short shrift.
Digger‘s story is one of those “there’s more than meets the eye” situations, but once it’s all said and done, its environmental message lands with a “duh.” It’s retreading the global warming waters of Don’t Look Up with slightly varied villains (a pompous oil man instead of a goofy tech guru), but using the same blunt force to hammer home its message. We’re doomed if we let these bozos run our planet, yet here they are, taking up all the oxygen in the important rooms. But the thought isn’t much deeper than that sentiment. Although there are a lot of ideas in Digger, not all of them necessarily do more than point out the obvious or finish the thought; after it becomes this movie’s message that the rich have broken the earth, it’s a benevolent rich guy who uses his resources and technology to save the day. Maybe some rich people are okay, Digger says, but only if they learn from their relative’s shameful, destructive mistakes. There’s a slightly better critique of its president’s administration—no doubt drawing some parallels to our current one, in how it cashes in on religion for political points, making a big show of prayer circles but dispensing with them quickly when the faithful are no longer needed—but it’s only one of a handful of running bits in the movie that actually pay off.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.