{"id":55096,"date":"2026-09-30T14:08:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=55096"},"modified":"2026-09-30T15:04:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:04:48","slug":"digger-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/30\/digger-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Digger [2026]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An ego-driven industrialist\u2019s carelessness brings about climate disaster, plus a little more, in Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s DIGGER. Led by a fantastic Tom Cruise, the satire is a complexly mixed bag, entertaining but also unsatisfying and muddled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

TW: An elderly animal is in pain, and often used for comic (and satiric) effect. However, it\u2019s clearly a puppet (as it is meant to be) if that helps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Digger is a film that almost works. Directly: it\u2019s a mess. An ambitious mess with a total go-for-brokenness that I always appreciate. The sheer act of going big gets points. That\u2019s what we get with Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu<\/a>. He doesn\u2019t make small movies. He makes spectacles, big swings that hold nothing back in creation and acting on ideas and themes. Even his comparatively smaller breakthrough works, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, contain what makes Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance<\/a> and The Revenan<\/a>t hit hard: powerful narratives and strong characters within their specific styles. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths missed the mark, falling into self-indulgence. Digger lands somewhere in the middle. I loved the grandeur, complications, and compelling nature. It\u2019s hilarious, with a grand audacity from start to finish. It\u2019s a giant absurdist fable of the current world, but it also fails: the satire is shallow and so direct it gets lost in satirizing the satire; any power it can derive is wasted on self-importance as big as the characters’ egos, leaving it lacking cohesion. In the public sphere, Digger has already proven divisive; and in my private sphere, it\u2019s just as divisive in my own brain and thought process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the first half of Digger, scripted (in story and screenplay) by Sabina Berman, Jez Buttewroth, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicholas Giacobone, and Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, I was totally on board. In an obscenely large mansion, Tom Cruise<\/a>\u2019s Digger Rockwell deals with his 30-year-old dying cat, a cat that clearly wants to die, but he\u2019s too selfish to let it happen, working as a metaphor for everything else – how his and other people\u2019s selfishness keep anyone else from their needs; and ignoring everything anyone who actually knows anything has to tell him, whether it be a climate scientist on a rig or Riz Ahmed<\/a>\u2019s Dr.Ganesh; if it affects the bottom line, it shouldn\u2019t happen. If it has catastrophic effects, it\u2019s someone else\u2019s problem. And it does: an \u201caccident\u201d caused by not listening to the people who need to be heard can explode and easily cascade into a global disaster. But how will it affect his PR and his pocket?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u00a0<\/a>moves the film with insane energy, set to the beat of Birdman, constantly spinning, turning, holding, and crafting an expansive narrative. And it\u2019s often very funny, with the overtop of it all. The timing is generally on point. Everything is larger than life, with a beautiful artificiality and tone that comes from such choices. It\u2019s a clear satire of the rich, powerful, mostly white and male, as purposely pallid and sallow as their souls, not unlike \u201cthe idiots are in charge of our continued existence\u201d in Dr. Strangelove, but in the modern era. But it\u2019s also the film\u2019s failing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The issues really creep in the last half. At some point, Innaruto stops the film cold to state Digger’s thesis directly, without any coating. As if we didn\u2019t already know. It\u2019s pretty clear from the first time Digger Rockwell ignores a climate scientist. That\u2019s the issue. The satire is so direct, it\u2019s toothless. Anyone paying attention knows the world is continually made worse by callow men who care only about putting another dollar in their pocket, using that dollar to fuel their ego and empty lives rather than helping anyone. When the current administration is so far into the truth is stranger than fiction, outdoing the Onion, it makes it incredibly hard to satirize. But that\u2019s it, pointing blame at the easy (and deserving) target and the generations of men like these who have got us here. Digger does no digging (heh); it\u2019s a shallow grave of satire. It\u2019s made worse by its desire to have its cake and eat it too. As it functions as a satire, a shift in the first act also makes Digger a satire of satires, of self-righteous aren\u2019t-we-smart \u201ctakedowns,\u201d films like the atrocious Don\u2019t Look Up. The film also makes Digger a satire of satires-of self-righteous aren’t-we-smart “takedowns,” films like the atrocious Don’t Look Up. I\u2019m torn about the twist\/shift; on one hand, it allows further exploration of construction, deconstruction, and destruction. On the other hand, it lampshades the film\u2019s own issues. If the main portion of the film is meant to be a treatise against this sort of work, why do we spend so much time in it? I wonder if, at some point, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and the screenwriting team realized it wasn\u2019t working as is and changed course to fix and deepen the film. Either way, it doesn\u2019t work, leaving a conflicted mess.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As jumbled, messy, and ultimately nearly a nothing in the plotting and messaging, Digger is a technical marvel. The production design by Dennis Gasner and Richard L. Johnson is wowing and fully engaging. The purely and overdone artificiality, not unlike Lanthimos<\/a>\u2019s Poor Things<\/a> and aspects of the also-cribbed Kubrick<\/a>, and more than a dollop of Wes Anderson<\/a>, works to an insane degree. Even as I started to sigh at the scripting, the presentation kept drawing me in and engaging me. It\u2019s a twisted, decaying world, and I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Gasner, and Johnson lean into it. Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot The Revenant,\u00a0 shot it in VistaVision, working with those production designers to craft a rich, jaw-dropping tableau. It may be one of the visually notable films of this year (though I can\u2019t help but think of the artificiality of Camp Miasma<\/a>, done on a sliver of Digger\u2019s budget and for better). It\u2019s an incredibly well-done film overall.<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No fault of the actors either. Tom Cruise<\/a>, under a layer of latex like his Tropic Thunder role as Lex Grossman, hasn\u2019t been this good since Magnolia<\/a>. He\u2019s full caricature, and he works it. The character might be bravado and ego, but I feel none of that from Cruise. Riz Ahmed threatens to steal the film with what might be the most interesting character, at least the most dynamic. John Goodman<\/a> is just as good screaming his way through the President of the US, with Michael Stuhlbarg<\/a> getting amazing laughs as the cowardly VP. Loved seeing Robert John Burke<\/a> in a handful of scene-stealing lines. Great to have Sandra H\u00fcller in her second climate-based movie this year after Project Hail Mary<\/a>. She had big Catherine O\u2019Hara<\/a> energy, to the point that at the start I was thinking, \u201cdid they deage O\u2019Hara<\/a> for an uncredited final performance?\u201d Wish we had her more. Emma D\u2019Arcy gets a few bits, as does Lucas Hedges<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Digger, directed by Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and written by a slew of folks, is a troubled film. So much worked, made me laugh, and drew me in. But just as much was sanctimonious claptrap that undid the goodwill of the rest. I may need a second viewing to see where I land. Either way, I highly appreciate what I\u00f1\u00e1rritu is going for, and I will always be drawn to big swings, audacious attempts at something huge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An ego-driven industrialist\u2019s carelessness brings about climate disaster, plus a little more, in Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s DIGGER. Led by a fantastic Tom Cruise, the satire is a complexly mixed bag, entertaining but also unsatisfying and muddled.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302],"class_list":["post-55096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55096"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55100,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55096\/revisions\/55100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}