Digger Review: Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom Cruise Take a Massive, Brilliant Swing

Ever since Tom Cruise announced that his next movie would be a dark comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu about “the most powerful man trying to save the world from a disaster he created,” my excitement has been immeasurable. When the first trailer dropped, I was immediately disappointed. Digger looked unmarketable, shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges in Hollywood advertising history. Yet, despite those early fears, this massive swing is a breathtakingly interesting triumph that makes the marketing struggles entirely worth it.

Digger Review

For the most part, the film introduces Digger Rockwell, an oil baron who is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. He’s a sloppy, aggressive pig spending his private hours taking care of a disgusting, decaying cat. Rockwell is reluctantly called to action after an industrial explosion in Greenland sends a massive piece of an ice shelf careening directly toward Europe. It’s all obvious and intellectually unstimulating at first, yet Iñárritu makes it work by framing the story around this bombastic chaos.

Then comes a turn roughly forty-five minutes into the runtime that is so brilliant it justifies the entire endeavor. Without spoiling the mechanics for anyone walking in blind, the floor completely drops out from under the narrative. What seems like a straightforward corporate-disaster satire peels back its layers, revealing an ambitious meta-theatrical framing device in which the on-screen absurdity is an elaborate, staged attempt to process an ongoing ecological nightmare in real time. It takes a story about impending global devastation and reframes it as an urgent, agonizing personal crisis about guilt, complicity, and artistic hubris.

That shift is where we get the absolute best of Tom Cruise in Digger, tapping into the manic, explosive comedy that defined his most memorable character work while taking a vulnerable, introspective turn. Cruise pivots between unhinged physical humor and raw psychological unraveling, capturing the desperate panic of a man struggling to maintain control as the world collapses around him. It’s a reminder of how thrilling Cruise can be when he steps away from blockbuster stunts and submits to an auteur willing to push him outside his comfort zone.

He’s surrounded by a cast of brilliant actors being twisted into pretzels by Iñárritu’s manic vision. John Goodman is sickening and frail as a corrupt president who embodies institutional decay, while Riz Ahmed stands on his own against Cruise in several magnetic, heated face-offs. Jesse Plemons, carefully hidden throughout the film’s promotional marketing, winds up delivering one of the strongest turns in the entire picture as the quiet architect pulling the strings of the production. The only real weak link is Sandra Hüller, who gives a slightly out-of-place performance that never quite gels with the film’s specific frequency of comedic absurdity.

As for the framing that Iñárritu takes, despite all the heavy lifting that it does, it’s hard to parse whether the script suffers from it or benefits greatly. I have a feeling that he’s trying to evoke the intentional loudness and obtuseness associated with climate change discourse, yet it feels remarkably prescient right now. I was even keener on this as I drove home from my movie theater in Los Angeles, looking to fill up my tank, only to see the cheapest gas in the area was $6.79 a gallon. We, as a society, are so shackled to destroying the planet that it’s all too expensive for us to even do that.

It’s important to talk about the technical stuff too. Why does it look like… that? In early trailers, the footage seemed dreary, cold, and strangely artificial, giving the impression that the cinematography was cheap or flat. But there’s a calculated purpose behind that visual style. The moment the setting’s underlying reality is unmasked, the sterile stage lighting, confined sets, and theatrical camera placements suddenly click into place. The stage design is incredible, and the makeup and hairstyling are undeniably strong, working in tandem to give the enclosed space a tangible, immersive texture.

Is Digger worth watching?

Great satire can come from many places. It can be obvious, and it can sneak up on you. Iñárritu takes a bold leap of faith in trusting that audiences will stay with him through all the thematic noise. Through Tom Cruise as his conduit, he has made a film that is all sorts of nonsense, and yet also funny, exciting, and full of heart. Perhaps the most interesting part of all in Digger is that it’s one of the biggest $100 million swings in recent Hollywood memory that feels incredibly fitting as a final hurrah from a studio about to go under, much like the real-life Digger Rockwells who are about to run Warner Bros., its own final frontier.

Digger releases in theaters on October 2, 2026.

Digger Review: Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom Cruise Take a Massive, Brilliant Swing