Digger – Movie Review
Tom Cruise is synonymous with blockbuster cinema. Mission: Impossible. Top Gun. Edge of Tomorrow. It’s easy to forget that outside of the billion dollar franchises and theatrical spectacle, Cruise also has a penchant for award worthy dramas, with Oscar and Golden Globe nominations under his belt. Alejandro G. Inarritu is no stranger to awards acclaim, winning the Academy Award for Best Director two years in a row for Birdman and The Revenant, as well as taking Leonardo DiCaprio to his first Oscar for the latter. So, as Cruise begins the last innings of his career, it makes sense that he would team up with a proven winner in the awards space to push for his chance to finally take home the big statue for acting. Thus… Digger.
Cruise plays the titular character, Digger Rockwell, in this satirical black comedy that takes aim at the oil men, corrupt politicians, and evil billionaires who prioritise money and power over the environment and the people who inhabit it. Digger wakes up one morning to find that a methane explosion under one of his dig sites has caused a massive ice shelf to hurtle itself towards Europe, with mass casualties predicted if it makes landfall. Dealing with a dying cat, his head of Environmental Safety (Riz Ahmed) hounding him for not taking precautions earlier, his half-sister and business partner (Sandra Hueller) questioning him at every turn, and the President of the United States (John Goodman) ready to throw Digger under the bus if he doesn’t fix this catastrophic problem and quick.
Playing out like a modern day take on Dr. Strangelove, Digger is big, bold, absurd, and very in the face of the audience. The settings of Digger’s absurdly big mansion or the White House war rooms full of old, crusty men making dumb decisions about the fate of the world ring eerily similar to Kubrick’s anti-war satire. The script leans into the craziness of it all, balancing an interesting tone of comedically portraying the reactions of the men in power with an underlying prodding that this may not actually be too inaccurate to how these situations go down behind closed doors. Misogyny, greed, and complete incompetence is at the forefront of the portrayal of all of the characters – even the ones who feel like they want to morally skew towards the greater good of humanity.
Cruise dons a heavy layer of prosthetics to portray the aging oil tycoon, but his signature dynamic energy shines through in a bombastic performance that goes all out – accent and mannerisms alike. The supporting cast also lean into the heightened nature of it all. No one feels like they are operating under a level 10 of insanity, almost to the point of exhaustion for both the performers and audience. Between Cruise, Goodman, Ahmed and Hueller, there doesn’t feel like a point in the movie where someone isn’t speaking below a yelling level of volume or isn’t out of breath delivering the dialogue (or occasionally monologues in a stand out scene from Cruise). It’s the intensity and insanity in the performances that really brings out the attempts at satire that Digger is going for. And I want to emphasise the word attempt, because for the first 30-or-so minutes, Digger feels like it’s going to be a straight-up “comedy”… until it’s not.
There was never going to be a world with the boldness of Inarritu’s filmmaking that would lean towards a more traditional narrative. The reveal that then takes place will make or break the film for most people. It’s a twist that completely changes the pacing, trajectory, and momentum of the film. And if it doesn’t land for you, then you must prepare to suffer through the remaining two-thirds of Digger.
For me, Digger at that point became less interesting and far more pretentious and preachy. It’s a film that is angry at how the world has reacted to things like climate change, politicians who value power more than people, and billionaires who will forgo safety to save a couple of million bucks. Inarritu’s script, which was co-written with three other writers, relentlessly hammers home these points with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the side of the head. The film is yelling at its own audience who would most likely be coming into this film already in agreement with its anger. But where other films have successfully explored these themes in an effective way before, Digger’s twist adds a whole other level of pretentiousness as it puts forward an argument about what stories should be told, and how they should be told.
On a technical level, Digger is bold and impressive. The grand scale of the set design is just as larger than life as the performances that inhabit these settings. The choice to also shoot the film on VistaVision adds to the grandeur of it all. But it almost feels like a waste, because even outside of a handful of truly phenomenal scenes and set pieces that feel award worthy on their own, the film just keeps making a point to pretentiously punch the audience in the face with the sentiment of “You get it, right?”.
Digger is a tough film to explain, and even tougher to watch. Cruise gives the performance that would be required to at least get nominated for that award he so pines for. But he is dwarfed by a film that feels bigger than it is, and acts smarter than it is, resulting in a cinematic experience that will most likely infuriate those who aren’t on board with what Inarritu is selling here.
Digger is in Australian cinemas October 1
