by Anthony O’Connor
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons
Intro:
It has the exhausting quality of hanging out with a group of drama students while sober, and it’s certainly not going to be for everyone.
You’ve got to give it to Tom Cruise, the bloke knows how and when to pick his projects. Just when general audiences were starting to get a little tired of his seemingly endless Mission Impossible movies (none of which have really ever managed to top Brian De Palma’s 1996 original, just quietly), the Cruiser mined the fecund vein of nostalgia with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick and will continue to do so with the upcoming Days of Thunder 2. What are the other roles ol’ mate is best loved for? Why, his more absurd, comedic turns in Magnolia (2000) and Tropic Thunder (2008), of course. And wouldn’t you know it, but he’s gone and bunged on some prosthetics and adopted a silly accent for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest social satire, Digger. However, there’s a little more going on under the surface in this strange, uneven flick and it takes some jaw-droppingly big swings.
Some of them even connect.
Digger is the story of Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an insanely rich and powerful fossil fuels magnate who lives in tacky luxury, drains the planet’s resources and attempts to keep his ancient cat Maggie alive. Things kick off when one of Digger’s mining operations hits a snag that swiftly leads to a catastrophic event that could displace millions and kill hundreds of thousands. Digger must rally the troops, including US President Compson (John Goodman), longsuffering scientist Doctor Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) and Digger’s own sister, Emma Rockwell (Sandra Hüller) to try and find a solution to the crisis. Or, at the very least, pass the blame onto someone else.
The first half an hour or so of Digger plays out like a broad, acerbic social satire or political comedy. It’s a timely enough mode of film – particularly when it feels like lately we wake up every day wondering which love-starved billionaire will attempt to ruin our lives – but also unsubtle, on-the-nose and more than a little gruesome. And then the film pulls the rug in the first of two strikingly impactful ways.
We’re not going to go into details, this is a film best seen as spoiler free as possible, but it’s a great little twist and one that elevates the material into something far more interesting.
Performances are very strong, with Cruise playing against type with gleeful alacrity and both John Goodman and Riz Ahmed are in fine comedic form. Alejandro G. Iñárritu also directs the hell out of this thing, his camera roaming around with much the same nervous energy he showcased in both Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015). The problem with Digger, however, is the same problem with most of Iñárritu’s gear: there’s just too much of it. Not just in terms of runtime, although this would have been a far better film had 15-20 minutes been excised, but rather, a general sense of intensity bloat. Digger is a lot, it has moments of brilliance sitting cheek-to-jowl with eye rolling excess, monologues that drag on far too long and fields of lilies being unnecessarily gilded. It’s an audacious film, no question, one with chutzpah up to its neck, but also indulgence untempered by even a whiff of restraint. It has the exhausting quality of hanging out with a group of drama students while sober, and it’s certainly not going to be for everyone.
That said, there’s a bloody good film here. One with truly resonant themes, buoyed by topnotch performances and with a couple of narrative twists that are deliciously subversive. Digger is not a perfect movie, it can be blunt and a tad shouty and it’s a bit of an undisciplined mess at times. However, for those who like their cinema at least attempting to grapple with big ideas and taking eye-popping risks, both narratively and stylistically, there’s more than enough going on in this densely packed slab of surreal satire to keep you engaged.
