Story by Sabina Berman & Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Jez Butterworth
Screenplay Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu & Alexander Dinelaris Jr. & Nicolas Giacobone and Sabina Berman
Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu
**** (four stars)
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 2hrs 9min
By the time you read this review, this film will most likely have vanished from theaters. And what a profound loss that will be for the movies and movie going audiences.
Director Martin Scorsese raised the ire of film goers a few years ago when he attested that the superhero genre, most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut, were essentially experiences that did not necessarily amount to much more than amusement theme park rides. While many were angered and offended, I, however, could see the point that he was trying to make. I do not believe that Scorsese was not negating any artistic value to the comic book movie genre or decrying those movies as existing in some form of "low art" basement. He was saying, basically what I have been saying for many years upon this site, even as one who has habitually gone to theater to see and have often loved those specific movies. I do not hate super-hero movies. I simply hate that they are being made at the expense of nearly every other film that could be made, and therefore, being released theatrically.
Because of this reality, with actual choices diminished, audiences have become more conditioned to the "Marvel aesthetic," so to speak, all of the rhythms, beats and expectations that have come from the endless stream of sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, re-imaginings and everything tried and true within all IP based franchises. Trailers give away every aspect of the movie in question, leaving nothing to the imagination or even a sense of wonder. And so, increasingly movies have run the risk of becoming increasingly disposable, fast food entertainment designed to be consumed, forgotten, and regurgitated into some similar cinematic fast food. Rinse and repeat.
For this and other reasons, including decreased attention spans, lazier writing which has contributed to a serious decline in media literacy, a film like "Digger" never stood a chance.
Dear readers, Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Digger" is easily one of 2026's tallest achievements, if not the one that just might be sitting at the very top. Since the height of the pandemic, and the depletion of movie theaters in my city--once a haven for all; manner of movie theaters--my movie going has declined sharply. That being said, 2026 has been a year where my movie going interests has been re-ignited and ultimately, nearly everything that I have seen has proven to be of top tier quality (hence the series of high praise reviews that I have been writing as of late). With "Digger," I emphatically proclaim it to not only being one the best films of this year but additionally, one of the best films of the 21st century due to the exceedingly high artistry on display combined with the unapologetic boldness of its creative swings and the enormity and tremendous depth of its pathos during a period of our collective history that grows more precarious by the hour.
Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Digger" stars Tom Cruise in the titular role of aging oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, who finds himself, through his company's oil drillings, wholly responsible for an ecological disaster which could prove cataclysmic. With that brief description, this is all that I feel comfortable sharing with you so as to not dilute the full experience of seeing it for yourselves-which incidentally, I feel was a master-stoke on the part of the film's cryptic trailers, which revealed not a stitch--some say to its determent but I deeply disagree. If you have not seen it, please trust me. I feel that this is one to enter into as blindly as possible.
What I am more than comfortable sharing with you is that even after the likes of "Babel" (2006), "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)" (2014) and "The Revenant" (2015), Alejandro G. Inarritu has again created a high wire act of a motion picture experience overflowing with meta-textual, muti-layered ideas and an audio visual aesthetic that would be impossible to fully intake with just one viewing. The production design and art direction is masterful. Composer Cosmo Sheldrake's score and the impeccable sound design is enveloping and haunting. Emmanuel Lubezski's cinematography is startling, crisply hazy and hallucinogenic in its surrealist presentation where characters loom largely over our heads in increasingly grotesque rubber faced fury that feels like Gerald Scarfe illustrations brought to horrific flesh and blood life.
Yes, Inarritu has fashioned a satire that feels designed to echo Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" (1964) or Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" (1985) while sitting more than comfortably alongside both films. I would extend this conceit that I often felt that I was viewing what could be complementary or even greater extension of both Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" (2008) and Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" (2023). Furthermore, Inarritu displayed an unforgiving boldness this side of the late Ken Russell and certainly nothing I have seen since both Boots Riley's "Sorry To Bother You" (2018) and undeniably Coralie Fargeat's "The Substance" (2024).
And even further, if there was anything that rose to my mind more often than not was actually an album...most specifically, The Kinks' "Preservation Act 2" (released May 8, 1974), a terrifying, devastating concept album rock opera about two warring politicians wrestling for control of the pastoral Village Green, resulting in the end of the world.
As Digger Rockwell, Tom Cruise, in full prosthetics, and after decades of hurling himself into and out of one life threatening stunt after another for our entertainment and his sheer love of making movies, more than delivers again with a deeply multi-faceted performance that showcases precisely what a skilled actor he remains and has always been but is often forgotten due to his massive celebrity and controversies. Cruise proves himself equal to Alejandro G. Inarritu's absurdist vision with a performance that is superbly magnetic, charismatic and as feverishly committed as ever, containing literal and symbolic multitudes, stupendously culminating in an incendiary fever dream-ish, nearly 10 minute monologue that leaves absolutely no one spared...and that incudes all of us in the audience.
Perhaps here is precisely where and most importantly, why "Digger" was greeted with a vicious response from critics and its now widely reported box office failure and rapid removal from theaters has become the undeserved and misrepresented story of the film rather than what Alejandro G. Inarritu was attempting to present through his work. I carried some of these same feeling when regarding the media's especially harsh response towards Adam McKay's "Don't Look Up" (2021). In both cases, I feel that media sources and their corporate owners and the oligarchs who own them would have quite the reaction towards a work of art that lays rightful blame directly at their feet as they all sling deflecting critiques that proclaim the work as being wither "smug," "unsubtle," or "on the nose"--words designed to dismiss, hoping potential audiences follow suit. Of course, everyone has an inherent right to having their own opinions but for "Digger," it all; felt to be more than calculated. That being said, I am not here to review the surroundings of the film. I am here to review the film itself, what I saw on screen and how it affected me personally. And what I can tell you is that Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Digger" left me more than shaken by film's end and it has not left me since.
Through the tools of surrealism, what Inarritu has delivered extends far beyond being a satire about climate change and its ensuing destruction, giving us in the audience fingers of outrage to point towards enemies both real and imagined. As one character screams at one point, "Perception is reality!!!"--which is, in and of itself, a fallacy but is indeed a truth considering the times in which we are living when the sheer weight of empirical facts are weakening as they are are being debated often landing in one's sense of perception being declared as "this is my truth."
Inarritu utilizes "Digger" as this specific trap door as the film surprises us over and again not by topping itself from one sequence to another but by upending itself over and again from one sequence to another, therefore altering our perceptions of everything we had seen and felt prior, leaving us constantly unbalanced until the film's conclusion, which only then continues to upend into the closing credits.
I was so shaken by "Digger" because Alejandro G. Inarritu beautifully presented a funhouse mirror aesthetic as a full reflection of the funhouse mirror reality in which we are living in the 21st century. And in doing so, it is a film that questions the validity and purpose of satire, art, storytelling and even finding communion in artistic expression when reality itself is taking a daily plunge into cartoon nightmares from which we are unable to awake from.
I feel that Inarritu is arguing in "Digger" that as a society, we are further away from anything Franz Kafka and George Orwell could have dreamed up for look at where we are. We are facing down an AI annihilation while Mother Nature is rightfully and righteously fighting back our lack of stewardship over this world that we have been gifted. Even knowing the ultimate outcome, our real world oligarchs are only continuing to destroy for the purpose of lining their pockets for money they cannot take with them. Too many of our leaders are monsters, including our own President of the United States, a mashed potato brained, incontinent, 34 time convicted criminal, adjudicated rapist, racist, pedophile and political tool of adversaries to whom he places an intense desire to find Father figures as he falls asleep on camera on a daily basis and still, even now, he is seen by some as the pillar of strength.
And even then, there are all of US, including myself writing to you from my laptop, as WE are complicit in our own eventual eradication.
Before I go any further, I wish to share a memory with you. I remember when I was 14 years old and my parents had indulged me by taking in the opening weekend showing of Terry Jones' "Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life" (1983). While my Mother surprisingly enjoyed quite a lot of it even proclaiming certain later sequences and moments in the film as being "poignant," my Father, however (and despite absolutely loving Terry Gilliam's inserted "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" segment), was overall dumbfounded. "I just don't get it!" he exalted. "The British...they just take it all too far. Honestly...why is this supposed to be funny?! I mean--Live Organ Transplants?! Why?!" he asked passionately as if his hands and arms were raised towards the skies. Well...there I was with all 14 years of wisdom at my disposal, took in my Father's questions and I answered, "It's all so absurd that the only reaction is laughter."
I am detailing that memory for you as I think that Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Digger" is taking the adage of "we laugh so as to not cry," and turns it inside out. Certainly, he is not decrying the importance of finding communion in any sort of artistic expression for if he was, why would anyone, anywhere even want to see his film? That being said, Inarritu is forcing us to be faced with deeper, tougher questions, of which even he himself is not exempt. I feel that he with "Digger" is asking what is the purpose of art, even as a means of catharsis, when it is essentially meaningless if we are all facing extinction. Is any sense of catharsis even more meaningless if he art in question is only able to exist through the means and systems of the oligarchs we are pointing our fingers towards? Is our art and then, our catharsis then manufactured? If art is indeed that manufactured, is there any art at all and precisely who is allowed to partake of the expression regardless of the means in which it was created?
In a cinematic world ruled by endless, repetitive IP, these are questions those in the power to greenlight new feature films do not wish for us to ask, I would think. The audacity of Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Digger" cannot be overstated. And neither can its tragedy. For this film is not depicting the tragedy of screaming into the abyss.
It is the tragedy of screaming from the abyss.
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