I have to admit, I feel as though Digger and I really started off on the wrong foot.
Like a lot of people, I’m sure, my first proper introduction to the premise came with its original teaser trailer some months ago. That trailer was a few minutes long and probably featured, by my estimation, around twenty seconds of the film itself – thirty at an absolute push. The rest of the teaser was quite overtly occupied by an incredibly long sizzle reel of its star, Tom Cruise’s, past work, everything from Top Gun to Eyes Wide Shut; Risky Business to Mission: Impossible.
‘When all else fails, you hit ‘em with the truth. You know, the hard truth. Just…bang bang bang!’
He’s made some fantastic movies, of course (though the less said about the Scientology aspect; the better) but for all the nice moments crammed into the montage, the sum total of the whole thing did feel rather self-congratulatory, and I wondered what it was really building to.
Then the reveal came – this October, Tom Cruise is Digger – and I realised my place as an unwitting witness of the Great Tom Cruise Oscar Campaign of 2026. You’d think, being the star that he is, that he would’ve had something to take home by now, but outside of his honorary nod last year, he’s still yet to win in an official category.
This starring role, one he’d love to finally tip the scales with, sees him cast as Digger Rockwell, a grey-haired and beer-bellied American oil magnate whose beloved white cat, Maggie, could die of feline leukaemia at any moment – sometime, her vet posits, in the next five minutes or two weeks.
To add more bad news to the mix, a gigantic, 400ft glacier has detached from his rig up in Greenland, destroying the site and killing dozens of workers (though Digger’s more concerned with the financial loss). This massive berg – nicknamed Judy – is now headed straight for Europe, with the potential to cause apocalyptic damage. That may well put Digger (and his pals in the Oval Office) out of business.
When the President, his Vice President and all of his officials, yes-men and his personal pastor all pile into the conference room in Digger’s country mansion, the comparisons to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove become all too clear. As Riz Ahmed’s Dr. Ganesh wheels in a big screen to show the all-male room a graphic of Judy advancing on Europe at speed, causing everyone to bicker about how to keep their political noses clean, I was pointedly reminded of Kubrick’s own President ringing up the Russians to apologise for his government’s ‘silly thing’ with the bomb.
Those comparisons with Strangelove are baked into the very premise of the film itself, and as such, have cropped up all over the media coverage. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose past work includes Birdman and The Revenant, would no doubt love Digger to be widely regarded as the modern answer to the Kubrick classic, refined and re-tweaked for the climate crisis. That’s been the case in some circles, but the film’s proven rather divisive on release.
For my money, it’s not nearly as funny or confident as it ought to be to justify that comparison; in fact, early on, I felt as though I was watching a group of people who’d come together to take a stab at making some kind of modern follow up or fan film to Strangelove rather than carving out its own identity.
That criticism becomes slightly more complicated as parts of the narrative come into focus. It’s from that point onwards that it becomes quite hard to talk further about Digger without diving head first into all the details and negating any need to see the film at all. Instead I’ll say this: anyone can spot this film’s satirical edge – it’s hidden about as well as our real-world President’s fake tan lines – but the performances here, almost across the board, even from someone phenomenal like Sandra Hüller, feel as though Iñárritu turned to his cast and encouraged them to just go completely overboard with their characterisations.
There’s a version of that directorial note that could well have worked on screen, but as Digger plays out, it just gets louder and louder while remaining consistently unfunny. There’s a couple of scoff-worthy gags in there (literally two, by my count) which, for a two hour and ten minute feature, feels like a pretty dismal batting average. There are weird moments thrown into play, some of which work. Again, those feel like nods to the eccentricities of the original inspiration, but they at least add some colour to an otherwise pondersome plot.
Of all the shouting, Cruise’s performance is the shoutiest, presenting us with long tirades that bring his sneakily recorded outburst on the socially distanced set of Top Gun: Maverick right back to mind. As an actor, he’s given us plenty to enjoy the years and it’d be fantastic to see a deserved win after decades in the industry – deserved being the operative word there. The massive campaign already seemed like something to laugh about, but the idea that this performance, out of all of them, was the one he and the studio put their proverbial eggs into baffles me.
It’s far from the worst performance I’ve ever seen – on paper, he’s a fairly unlikeable character and I certainly didn’t take to him – but there’s no second layer to speak of, really. What you see of Digger is what you get – he’s a blowhard.
The film attempts to shine a little more light onto its central character (by the feel of it, out of little more than the structural obligation laid out in Todorov’s narrative theory) but finds very little in there, so much so that when he monologues for around ten minutes in a climactic set-piece, you find yourself tuning out. For all the bluster and for as smart as he thinks he is, he (and the film as a whole) is saying very, very little and making a right meal of doing so.
BBFC: Rated 15 for very strong language.
Digger is in cinemas now.
