Joyce Glasser reviews Digger (October 2, 2026) Cert. 15, 129 minutes
When you put Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu – the third director in the history of the Oscars to win back-to-back (Birdman/The Revenant) Academy Awards – with all American international superstar Tom Cruise you expect the kind of great theatrical experience that keeps movie theatres in business.
Instead, with Digger, we get an announcement asking us not to ruin the film for others with spoilers. It’s not apparent what anyone could reveal that would spoil the film any more than Iñárritu, Cruise, and a bunch of script writers who should know better have already done.
The motivation for the film might lie in Tom Cruise’s desire to hang up his wings and leather motorcycle jackets to finally win an Academy award coupled with Iñárritu’s desire to resurrect the essence of Birdman in an unrecognisable context. Birdman was an outstanding satirical black comedy about a washed-up film actor known for his superhero films, having a breakdown while attempting a theatrical comeback with some “serious acting”.
And to this end Iñárritu has Cruise don a fat suit and some ageing make-up (that doesn’t really work) to play an obsessive, corrupt oil baron named Digger (as in dig for oil) Rockwell (as in Rockefeller and oil well).
In the first scene, Digger is established as being the boss from hell, whose only allegiance is to his coddled, deathly ill cat. Anyone delivering bad news is sacked or accused of not working hard enough to find a solution.
And so it is that employees hesitate to deliver the bad news. When it comes, in the form of an international environmental disaster it’s too late to act. The rest of the film (minus the plot twist that is the spoiler) is Digger’s warped idea of damage control.
Many audience members will suspect the plot twist from clues in the first few scenes. A strange window onto a shifting landscape that looks like a back lit movie screen in Digger’s house is one. And just think about why an emergency cabinet meeting with the ailing US President (John Goodman) is held in Digger’s palatial mansion rather than in the White House where it logically would be held notwithstanding Digger’s wealth.
At the cabinet meeting, we learn that Rockwell and President Compson have colluded in the unchecked extraction of oil from Alaska and Greenland. Digger is so obsessed with earning money that he ignores warnings about methane gas leaks in the off-shore rigs. When we meet Digger getting up in his enormous, overstuffed bedroom, an explosion has dislodged a huge ice-shelf with the death of crews (that Digger ignores) and the loss of the rigs (that infuriates him).
In the rest of the film the consequences of the catastrophe continue. Digger clashes with his Head of Environmental Safety, Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) in a feud reminiscent of Trump’s public COVID battle with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Trying a new tactic to save himself, Digger encourages Ganesh to appear at a summit meeting and deliver his Casandra message. Digger’s strategy is to embrace Ganesh’s doomsday scenario while pointing the blame at the billions of us so addicted to, and dependent on fossil fuel, that we deserve our inevitable fate.
This environmental message is hollow coming from an actor who flies planes for a hobby and from a director who is clearly inspired by Dr Strangelove, but totally incapable of making us laugh even once. Everyone knows that you cannot parody Trump, as he’s already done that himself, and the on-the-noise attempt at satire is embarrassing.
Whereas the performers in Birdman and Dr Strangelove gave some of the best performances of their careers, the cast here all overact to the point we can neither believe them nor laugh at them. Sandra Hüller, miscast in a nothing role as Digger’s half-sister and business partner, gives the first pointless performance of her stellar career. With no one and nothing to watch, and the running time a ridiculous two-hours-plus, boredom sets in. The unforgivable sin of filmmaking is to bore your audience.
