Digger

With his new film Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu returns to the kind of ambitious cinema that refuses to settle for modest ideas. Part apocalyptic comedy, part political satire, and part existential farce, the film revolves around a deliberately grotesque premise: Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an extremely powerful oil tycoon whose drilling operations in Greenland have destabilized a glacier and could put the entire planet at risk. Rather than taking responsibility, Digger eventually convinces himself that he can also be humanity’s savior. It’s a premise that fits perfectly with an era in which billionaires can behave like celebrities, politicians like TV hosts, and disasters become public relations exercises even before anyone has begun to manage their consequences. Yet the great irony of Digger lies in the fact that a film about a man incapable of recognizing his own excesses often suffers from exactly the same problem. It’s intelligent, daring, and truly inventive as a film, but director Alejandro G. Iñárritu keeps piling on ideas until his satire becomes as heavy and unwieldy as the world it’s trying to ridicule—and that’s a real shame. 

At the heart of this controlled chaos stands the iconic Tom Cruise, so transformed that he’s almost unrecognizable at first glance. The prosthetics, the sparse white hair, the more imposing build, and the accent create an immediate distance from the impeccably polished image that has defined the actor throughout the latter part of his career. The transformation, however, is all the more interesting because of what it conceals. For years, Tom Cruise has specialized in characters defined by their competence: men who rush headlong into impossible situations and somehow manage to impose order upon them. Digger is a wonderfully distorted reflection of that archetype. He possesses the same absolute conviction, the same energy, and the same refusal to give in—except that here, these qualities belong to someone whose self-confidence might very well be part of the disaster. This allows Tom Cruise the actor to rediscover a comedic and grotesque range rarely seen since his memorable appearance as Les Grossman in the cult classic and unforgettable Tropic Thunder. He throws himself heart and soul into his performance, at times with brio, at other times with such aggression that it almost feels as though he’s reaching all the way to the back row of the theater. The result is fascinating, though not always nuanced.

This problem extends to Digger itself. Alejandro G. Iñárritu clearly wants the film to operate simultaneously on multiple levels, oscillating between ecological anxiety, the narcissism of billionaires, political powerlessness, media manipulation, personal mythology, and humanity’s remarkable ability to deny unpleasant truths. At its best, this results in a wonderfully unsettling comedy. Digger can be very funny precisely because the characters continue to behave according to the rituals of wealth and power while facing circumstances that render those rituals absurd. There are inevitably echoes of Dr. Strangelove in the clash between potentially apocalyptic consequences and ridiculous human behavior, although Digger is marked by a far more contemporary obsession with controlling narratives. Unfortunately, the screenplay doesn’t always let these ideas speak for themselves. A joke can turn into an explanation, an explanation becomes another metaphor, and a metaphor sometimes turns into a speech explaining to us what the film had already perfectly communicated through an image. Satire works particularly well when it leaves a bit of bite for the audience to discover; Digger all too often insists on showing us exactly where that bite has been placed.

Visually, in collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu gives Digger an extraordinary physical presence. Shot on film in VistaVision, the film has the look and feel of a true large-scale cinematic production, at a time when too many expensive films bear a striking resemblance to extremely costly television productions. The camera oscillates between spectacle and an unsettling intimacy, transforming sumptuous rooms, political spaces, and monumental sets into extensions of Digger’s exaggerated worldview. The art direction, costumes, makeup, and tangible textures constantly reinforce the strange blend of high-brow drama and grotesque comedy that characterizes the film. The supporting cast also offers a welcome counterbalance to the star’s magnetic presence. Riz Ahmed is particularly compelling and brings a lively, unpredictable energy to his scenes, while John Goodman makes a strong impression as an ailing U.S. president. Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, and Sophie Wilde populate this increasingly surreal world with characters who often seem aware that the usual rules no longer apply, even if the screenplay doesn’t always give them enough room to shine beyond their roles in the satire. This is a real shame, because with such a cast, we could have had a striking and memorable film rather than just an intense cinematic experience that’s at times grueling due to its reliance on mirror effects and its tendency to play on the audience’s nerves.

The film’s inconsistencies become increasingly evident as its ambitions continue to grow. Digger seeks to provoke laughter, discomfort, anger, and, finally, something resembling an existential reflection, but the transitions between these different tones can be jarring. Some sequences are truly inspired, while others feel like convoluted detours built around an idea that could have been expressed far more effectively. The result is a unique experience where boredom and fascination can sometimes follow one another just minutes apart. There is clearly something admirable about seeing a filmmaker given substantial resources by a studio and using them to create such an eccentric work rather than another carefully calculated installment in a franchise. Yet ambition alone is not enough to solve problems of pacing or structure. At times, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu seems so determined to imbue every scene with meaning that the cumulative effect ultimately diminishes their individual impact. Digger has a lot to say and its desire to say it all ultimately prevents several of its most striking observations from hitting home with the precision they deserve.

What makes the film captivating, even in its least successful moments, is the strange dialogue it establishes with Tom Cruise’s career. There is something inherently amusing about seeing an actor known for his absolute physical mastery portray a man convinced that reality itself can be shaped by sheer willpower alone. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu understands the mythology surrounding his star and exploits it time and again. The qualities that make Ethan Hunt reassuring become unsettling when attributed to Digger Rockwell: certainty becomes arrogance, perseverance becomes denial, and charisma becomes yet another mechanism for evading responsibility. This meta dimension gives the film far more substance than its prosthetic transformation would suggest at first glance. Tom Cruise clearly relishes the opportunity to appear unattractive, ridiculous, and at times pathetic, and seeing one of the world’s most carefully curated movie-star images undergo such a degree of distortion is arguably more interesting than the environmental catastrophe surrounding it. The film Digger is at its best when director Alejandro G. Iñárritu lets this contradiction breathe rather than wrapping it in yet another layer of commentary.

Digger is, therefore, a fascinating film that constantly teeters on the edge of greatness before being sidetracked by its own ambitions. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu treats us to striking imagery, genuine absurdity, and several ideas worth discussing long after the credits roll, while Tom Cruise delivers one of his most daring performances in years, a far cry from the action movies he’s been in recently. Yet the film’s length, its tonal instability, its narrative imbalance, and its insistence on emphasizing ideas that were already clear prevent these qualities from coming together as a fully satisfying whole. There is a sharper, more devastating satire buried somewhere at the heart of Digger, and one can assume that removing it rather than adding more content might have revealed it. Nevertheless, in an industry increasingly focused on recognizable formulas and easily marketable experiences, there is something refreshing about seeing Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu take such a huge risk. Digger doesn’t always live up to the scale of its ambitions, but even its failures are rarely forgettable. It’s a strange film technically impressive, at times brilliant, and just as often exhausting. It’s a spectacular rollercoaster ride that strikes the right note often enough to remain interesting, but not consistently enough to become the great film it so clearly aspires to be.

Digger
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman
Story by Sabina Berman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Jez Butterworth
Produced by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mary Parent, Tom Cruise
Starring  Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons
Cinematography : Emmanuel Lubezki
Edited by Stephen Mirrione, Conor O'Neill
Music by Cosmo Sheldrake
Production companies : Legendary Pictures, TC Productions
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date :  September 30, 2026 (United States), October 2, 2026 (United States)
Running time : 129 minutes

Viewed on September 24, 2026, at the Pathé Alesia in the Dolby theater