'Digger' Review: A Big, Bold And Ferocious Wake Up Call
Tom Cruise sets his sights on Oscar gold with Digger, a timely, wildly ambitious and bold swing that is a thunderous wake up call as much as it is a deeply entertaining, potent social satire.
‘Digger’ centers on Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an incredibly wealthy business tycoon who has inadvertently caused a global disaster. With the clock ticking and the fate of the world seemingly in his oil-drenched hands, he must reconcile his business ethics as he attempts to clean up the ugly mess he has made. After making a myriad of action films over the past decade, Cruise has decided to join creative forces with revered director Alejandro G. Iñárrittu to get back to his roots and remind audiences what he’s truly capable of. Thankfully, they’ve both picked a project that suits both of their respective strengths.
This is a film that rests squarely on the shoulders of Cruise in the lead and the seasoned actor is more than up for the task. Cruise swallows the screen whole here, wielding his charm, gravitas and effortless magnetism like sharp, serrated blades that cut deep, making Digger a deeply fascinating man to follow as the actor continues to showcase his versatility and dexterity as a performer. Cruise isn’t remotely afraid to delve into the nasty, grimy aspects of the character, especially as he continues to serve his own self interests at seemingly every turn. The gusto, panache and seasoning he’s able to sprinkle every line with is endlessly entertaining to watch, every choice calculated and assured. In another actor’s hands, this could’ve been a disastrous performance, but Cruise never lets the reigns slip. Simply put, this is the best performance the actor has given in over a decade by a landslide.
The rest of the impressive supporting cast comes to play ball as well. Ahmed and Goodman are the film’s aces in the hole, both fully understanding the assignment and delivering dynamite work respectively. Ahmed, who plays a timid, but highly knowledgeable scientist who consults Digger and Goodman’s President of the United States on the environmental crisis, delivers some of the strongest work of his career, easily holding his own with Cruise and Goodman, his chemistry with both of them palpable. Goodman is electric here as the President, fully understanding the absurdist storytelling and calibrating his performance perfectly to the material. Watching him and Goodman and Cruise share the screen is delightful, the two of them bringing out the very best in one another as they consistently square off against the other. The central trio of performances from Cruise, Ahmed and Goodman are stellar in and of themselves, but the supporting work from Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and Emma D’Arcy are also terrific.
Then there’s Iñárritu, a filmmaker who pairs perfectly with this story and meaty, timely material. He gets his hooks in the viewer from the very first frame, his handle on pacing and rhythm immaculate as always, knowing exactly how to ratchet up and sustain tension while keeping the focus firmly on character. His style never gets in the way of the wonderfully unpredictable storytelling, serving it and enhancing it ten fold at every fork in the road. His direction, coupled with the dizzyingly sumptuous cinematography from frequent collaborator and DP Emmanuel Lubezki, is a knockout combination. To say the visuals and camerawork are breathtaking feels reductive, Lubezki utilizing wide open, gorgeous framing to make every shot one that could easily be framed and plastered on a wall. The production design is also incredible, the attention to detail and meticulous thought evident in every scene and set, consistently adding to the immersion that makes for a film that yearns to be seen on the big screen.
The script is also wildly audacious and ambitious, vacillating between drama and absurdist comedy at the drop of a hat. The storytelling constantly keeps the audience on their toes, never playing it safe and taking big swings when most studio films would recess into predictability and security. The social commentary certainly isn’t subtle, but it’s clearly not intended to be and the film is all the better for it. Capitalistic hubris, climate change and its current and impending effects on our planet are front and center on its mind, giving viewers a ferocious and thunderous wake up that is sure to spark fiery conversation once the credits begin to roll. While there have been many films that have tackled this subject matter before, none have approached it in such an enveloping and imaginative way.
However, with a film as incredibly ambitious as this one, not everything perfectly clicks into place. While the film has a potent blend of absurdist comedy, satire and environmental drama, there are various instances where the humor doesn’t fully land and when it feels as if it’s in a tug of war between them all, resulting in a film that doesn’t always have a firm sense of identity. There are also some narrative surprises the film has in store that, while beautiful in scope and ambition, aren’t handled as deftly and seamlessly within the context of the story as clearly intended. Though the final act of the film lands with a visceral, sobering gut punch, the turbulence during landing threatened to buckle the plane. It also doesn’t help that the film runs a tad long in the tooth as it hurls its way toward its haunting final moments.
‘Digger’ is sure to be a heavily divisive film. However, it’s truly unlike anything that has been released this year and in quite some time, especially from a major studio like Warner Brothers. Its message is timely, eerily relevant and delivered with feverish bite by Cruise and Iñárritu who continue to demonstrate that they both have plenty of fun surprises up their sleeves at this stage in their respective careers. If this film makes anything disturbingly clear, it’s that sometimes audiences can’t escape the ugly truths, not even at the movie theater.