REVIEW: ‘Digger’ drills for comedy gold, with wildly mixed results
Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell in Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñàrritu.
Heading into my screening of Digger, the latest film from Alejandro G. Iñàrritu, I wondered if I was in for another Megalopolis. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s much-maligned and (perhaps) final film, Digger had all the markings of a certain kind of late-career work we only get from established directors. You know, the kind of “blank cheque” movie where a studio says yes to every crazy idea, hoping it will gel into an instant classic. The kind of movie that just as often blows up in everyone’s face.
The marketing makes Digger look like a sweeping, politically-motivated ensemble piece, jammed with the kind of A-list talent you can only attract with several Oscars to your name (and several for your cinematographer as well). It has a bizarrely desaturated colour palette, and was shot on VistaVision, the large film format that’s been all the rage recently. Oh, and don’t forget the headline: it’s led by Tom Cruise as a kooky Texas oil baron, a kind of performance that we haven’t seen from Cruise in nearly 20 years.
So does Digger strike black gold, or is it more of a Deepwater Horizon (the ecological disaster, not the film)? For the first two thirds, I thought I knew what I was getting; it fits the bill of a pretentious, swing-for-the-fences film that will irritate or confuse most of its audience, and charm the few that are left. But there’s a key speech from a character played by Jesse Plemons, near the end, that helped win me over a bit and counterbalance some of the earlier frustration. The result is a wholly mixed bag of an experience, one where I fully understand what the filmmakers are going for, but I don’t agree that it needed to be done in this way.
Saying that Cruise stars as the titular oilman is actually a complicated statement, since there’s an early revelation of a framing narrative – not mentioned in any of the marketing – that influences how the movie works. I won’t spoil the surprise, so for simplicity, let’s stick with “Cruise plays Digger”. Digger is a rootin’ tootin’ industrialist, happy to pump the planet for every drop of oil he can. One morning, as his terminally ill cat Maggie is about to breathe her last, one of Digger’s unethical drilling platforms in Greenland explodes, causing a massive ice shelf to drift towards Europe, threatening to flood the continent. What follows is Digger and the U.S. government’s feeble attempts to contain the damage, exposing them as pretty unsubtle metaphors for many current American political elites.
John Goodman as the comically ineffective President Compson.
Iñàrritu tries to make the most of the huge frame he’s selected for this relatively small story, filling it with the ornate rooms of Digger’s mansion or Backrooms-esque conference spaces. But if the scale of the visuals is intended as a joke, it doesn’t land. Neither do many of the actual jokes in the script, which are all a little too obvious in their social commentary to entertain. Cruise is given a huge speech halfway through that lays many of the movie’s ideas on the table, making the case that as much as people say they want to cut society’s dependence on fossil fuels, we’re all complacent enough about modern-day conveniences that we don’t really want to give it up. It’s the kind of scene that would probably play as a clip in the Oscars telecast (if Cruise can actually get nominated), but isn’t as memorable as Iñàrritu seems to think it is, considering the hundreds of extras and complicated blocking on display.
As much force as Cruise brings to the central role, my favourite performance was actually John Goodman as President Compson, a preening, demented fool that Goodman plays with rubbery-faced glee. Runner-up prize goes to Riz Ahmed as a sweaty climate scientist who rediscovers his morals. It is very commendable that Cruise chose to go this big in his return to non-action films, so hopefully Digger’s box office showing doesn’t scare him away.
I mentioned the surprise framing device – it reads as an attempt to defuse criticisms of pretension, as though seeing the movie through an additional layer explains away the cartoony aspects. Ironically, it backfires for most of the runtime, giving the sense that the filmmakers are scared to present a straightforward satire. That’s where Plemons’ character comes in with a scene that functions as an exposition dump, but nevertheless grounds you a little, giving enough context to help you understand not just the attempted climate message, but the filmmakers’ reason for presenting it in this way.
But to answer my question going in – is Digger another Megalopolis? No; it’s far more comprehensible and conventional, despite its uncommon visuals. To some, that might sound like a death sentence, since Coppola’s movie is unforgettable for its sheer amount of strange decisions. But Digger is absolutely the work of people who needed to step back and question how full of itself their movie had become. For a movie trying to convey a message, that’s about as lethal as a lit match next to an oil derrick.
Digger gets two stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
Digger would make a great double feature with Bugonia – two movies about impending disaster featuring Jesse Plemons as a guy with some secret knowledge.
I kinda want one of those smart mirrors that Cruise has.
Somehow Digger goes through the whole film without whacking anyone with his prized shovel.