Digger Review

Digger expends a gobsmacking amount of resources to come to life. For star Tom Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, it could only be thus. But this isn’t the typical Cruise film—his first in years without death-defying stunts—it almost shows him as an actual older man. Those resources and movie star efforts are for naught, however, because this is still very much an Iñárritu film. It’s not really alive.

Nevertheless, Cruise lords over the film as the titular character, a larger-than-life oil baron who awakens to learn that a massive glacier is heading for northern Europe. This is cause for obvious alarm, so the film rotates us through stagey scenes with the President of America (John Goodman), Digger’s eco-conscious half-sister (Sandra Hüller), an anxious scientist (Riz Ahmed), and more. What follows is true to life, in a fashion: everyone yells at everyone, nothing much is solved, and Digger, the man, keeps doing as Digger, the film, does. As a thesis emerges, Iñárritu’s film is ostensibly about the older, richer generation—discounting himself, one assumes—who continue to destroy our planet despite all warnings. Making a film of grand excess about this topic is almost funny, though not in an intended way. Instead, this is a comedy without jokes, and a satire that wants to bite at the concept of satire. And to be clear, Cruise only exacerbates these issues; his choice to bear down for any chuckle or mote of pathos does the film no favours. The balance of the cast follows suit to embarrassing effect.

Still, it’s possible to see how everyone got swept up in Digger‘s production. Iñárritu and Cruise are nothing if not insistent, even when they have no real grip on what they’re pushing. In this, the latter is a perfect empty vessel, and the former remains true to form. Like their film’s characters, they produce catharsis without meaning. An artistic event that will speak to no one, past, present, or future.