R | 2h 9m | Comedy, Farce | 2026
I’ve said it all along, and I’ll say it again—Tom Cruise is America’s most underrated and under-appreciated actor. He’s got it all: leading man looks, a character actor’s lack of vanity, and a killer sense of humor. “Tropic Thunder’s” Les Grossman, anyone? It’s really Cruise’s nerd-level Scientology that people have a problem with, and I’ll cede that point.
Unfortunately, “Digger,” which features an excellent cast and appears to be Tom Cruise’s not particularly subtle attempt at a 2027 Oscar, is a deeply off-putting film, and that’s meant both negatively and positively. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu attempts satire, but this latest project comes off more as self-aggrandizing self-indulgence.
“Digger” could have been outstanding. It would have worked fabulously as a delicious, sneering smackdown of humanity’s environmental negligence, corporate greed, and head-scratchingly effective ability to monetize its own extinction. Sadly, Iñárritu seems to have forgotten that satire is supposed to be amusing. Under any other director’s guidance, Cruise, along with Riz Ahmed and John Goodman, would have been sidesplittingly funny.
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Judy!
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an obscenely rich and powerful captain of industry. He’s a scion of a Texas oil family that first struck black gold back in 1917. Digger has built his empire by ravaging and looting the planet while lying to the masses that his drilling operations are perfectly safe. Unfortunately for him (and all of us) Mother Nature has not read nor cares about his quarterly earnings report.
To no avail, experts warned of the potential for a massive methane gas leak. When a sizable crack splits the glacier that Digger’s Arctic oil-rig is stationed on, a Philadelphia-sized chunk of ice (weather scientists name it “Judy”) calves and starts bobbing its way toward the coasts of England and Scandinavia. Should it reach Europe, it’ll be tsunami-time.
Now, Mr. Rockwell needs to defend himself against climate scientist Ganesh (Ahmed) and other environmental experts who are scrambling to prevent planetary disaster. Not to mention the POTUS (Goodman), his panicked veep (Michael Stuhlbarg), his cabinet, joint chiefs of staff, and the president’s Bible-thumping, glossolalia-spouting personal pastor.
Naturally, the man responsible for this impending catastrophe facilely reframes it and appoints himself humanity’s savior.
Greedy Billionaires. So?
Director Adam McKay explored similar territory in 2021’s “Don’t Look Up,” another climate-change allegory. However, McKay was able to find moments of genuine absurdity, whereas Iñárritu is convinced that louder automatically means funnier. Characters scream and flail about. Only Goodman’s attempt is effectively funny and minimally so.
Unfortunately, while “Digger” desperately wants to be a scathing indictment of corporate profits over humanity’s survival, its observations add nothing to the common knowledge. We get it: Oil companies don’t care about environmental regulations. We’ve been getting it for decades.
“Digger’s” linchpin is a prolonged, shouted monologue by Cruise in a Roman Colosseum-type setting. Who is this diatribe meant to enlighten? Greedy billionaires? Non-greedy ones? Will oil tycoons be standing in line at the local multiplex with breathless anticipation regarding how they might improve the ethics of their business practices? Unlikely. Maybe Iñárritu is nobly thinking more along the lines: “If just one oilman hears my message.”
Actually—the message is for us, and appears to be based on the now-famous courtroom rant by Colonel Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson), hollered at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men“: “You can’t handle the truth!” And also: “deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall—you need me on that wall!”
Digger Rockwell proclaims that we, the hypocritical, greedy consumers can’t handle the truth: Deep down, we want and need Digger digging oil, because we love our cell phones and endless stuff more than we care about the environment. It’s a convenient, self-serving, hypocritical and ironic anti-capitalist rant from a supercapitalist, that’s more than a little bit true.
Iñárritu is one of our most innovative, arresting directors. That said, “Digger” feels very much like he’s attempting to channel Paul Thomas Anderson. But instead of Anderson’s obsessive-compulsive preoccupation with stultifying minutia, he’s intent on feeding us deliberately grotesque imagery, such as Digger’s antediluvian, perennially urine-soaked white cat. The obvious CGI is meant to be seen as part of the joke, but it’s all just gross.
I was really hoping to see Cruise up the ante on his hysterically horrible human, Les Grossman. I’d hoped Iñárritu would shock us all by delivering a message countering Hollywood’s communist-spawned global warming narrative, along the lines of 2024’s “Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth).” That documentary argued that mainstream climate alarmism is the result of a top-down, anti-establishment political movement designed to restrict working-class industries and enforce global economic regulations.
Likewise, 2007’s “The Great Global Warming Swindle” argued that the scientific consensus on human-generated global warming is a multi-billion-dollar political environmental conspiracy, utilizing falsified scientific data, aimed at suppressing industrial development in developing nations, and promoting anti-capitalist, state-controlled (communist) economic agendas.
That content, with Tom Cruise seriously bringing the funny, would have been quite delicious. I wonder what the Scientology take on global warming is? Let’s see, Google says: “Individual Scientologists are encouraged to reduce energy usage, limit food waste, conserve water, and lower their carbon footprints.”
Hmm. That’s not bad. Well. Maybe he was just in it for the Oscar. That’s not going to happen. It’s time for “Tropic Thunder 2: Les Grossman.”
‘Digger’
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Starring: Tom Cruise, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours, 9 minutes
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2026
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
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