From TIME · Stephanie Zacharek · · 2m
Tom Cruise bloviates through Iñárritu's empty environmental farce
Digger is a thematically clumsy environmental parable that mistakes elaborate filmmaking for meaningful storytelling.
In brief
Digger is a thematically clumsy environmental parable that mistakes elaborate filmmaking for meaningful storytelling. Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's eighth feature, is an aggressively unfunny film that uses elaborate production design and Tom Cruise's over-the-top performance to disguise its lack of substance…
Iñárritu's eighth feature is empty trickery
Digger, the eighth feature film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, is pure, empty-headed trickery with a million moving parts and nothing to say, despite clawing at profundity every minute.
Cruise plays an oil tycoon obsessed with a fake cat
Tom Cruise, his face nearly unrecognizable beneath cookie-dough prosthetics, plays Texas oil tycoon Digger Rockwell desperately trying to keep his beloved animatronic emotional-support cat alive.
Everything is gray and joyless
Shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, nearly everything in Digger is grayish, from interiors to cloud-strewn skies to characters' skin. The movie is only pretending to be fun.
An environmental parable about oil and complicity
Digger receives advance warning of a cataclysmic world event killing hundreds of thousands caused by his ruthless oil quest. He later tells world leaders that everyone loves oil because it is the language of freedom.
“It is, after all, the language of freedom.”
Riz Ahmed plays Digger's environmental adviser
Digger's nervous, well-meaning environmental adviser, played by Riz Ahmed, knows of his boss's guilt but doesn't know how to spin it to the world.
The twist: Digger is a character in a play
Digger isn't real. He's a character in a play, and what we're seeing is a tech rehearsal. Cruise is merely playing the actor playing him, a play-within-a-movie conceit.
A cast wasted on elaborate sets
John Goodman plays the president of the United States, Jesse Plemons plays an audience member, and Sandra Hüller drifts through searching for a better picture. The film features elaborate sets-within-the-set.
Cruise's performance is all bluster and swagger
Through the whole aggressively unfunny farce, Cruise's Digger stomps and swaggers, bellows and bloviates. He doesn't speak his lines, he flings them like unguided missiles.
The film is reverse-engineered awards bait
Iñárritu and Cruise aren't telling a story; they're selling the genius of the movie they've made. This is reverse-engineered awards bait insisting it's digging for truth while just shoveling.
Here's the gist
Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's eighth feature, is an aggressively unfunny film that uses elaborate production design and Tom Cruise's over-the-top performance to disguise its lack of substance.
