A film that makes us question whether or not we truly know the story.
Digger is the latest film from acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil tycoon whose eccentricity outweighs his wealth. Early on, an employee alerts Rockwell that a deep crack has fractured a glacier, sending a massive ice wedge drifting toward Europe and threatening global disaster. Digger seeks to be humanity’s savior and rescue the world from its bitter demise. That is about as far as any plot synopsis should go.
Digger belongs to the category of films that prove nearly impossible to discuss without spoiling the story. The plot twist reveals itself at just about 15 minutes in. At that instant, it feels completely out of left field, polluting the rest of the story with a lingering sense of confusion. As Iñárritu introduces even more plot threads, the confusion only deepens and grinds the film to an unusual halt. Ultimately, the studio deliberately misled audiences about what to expect—leaving viewers to exit the theater wondering, “Did we walk into the wrong auditorium?”
While the central theme feels both timely and compelling, the underlying narrative lacks real weight. Perhaps the sudden tonal shift sabotages the film, or perhaps the story itself remains half-realized. The dense, heavy dialogue, in a strange way, both succeeds and fails in supporting the film’s main thesis. Though the overarching concepts are intriguing and the cast elevates the material slightly, the film still fails to deliver a conclusion that would leave audience members feeling enlightened, or at the very least, entertained.
Unfortunately, Digger demonstrates a flaw not just in movie marketing, but in modern cinematic storytelling itself. The film is clouded by a dreary energy, weighed down by a muted color palette and jarring, inconsistent sound design. Expecting more vitality from a movie about a booming Southern oil tycoon—complete with an actual preacher on his team—feels reasonable. Instead, the narrative loses its way inside its own high-minded themes while visibly straining to create trailer-ready moments. To use an oil drilling analogy: this film is the cinematic equivalent of Deepwater Horizon, though not that much of a disaster.
Nevertheless, Tom Cruise’s performance single-handedly makes the film worth examining. While the trailers promised a lighthearted caricature, Cruise delivers a far deeper, more nuanced performance on screen. Unfortunately, the surrounding clutter leaves him little room to breathe. Iñárritu tackled these exact same themes far more effectively in his earlier work.
Deciding how to feel about Digger requires more than a single viewing. Whether that is a compliment or not is still uncertain. Wrestling with the mid-movie twist while adjusting to the new plot direction will exhaust casual filmgoers. Audiences seeking a complex, thought-provoking drama might find scattered moments of satisfaction, but little else. Marketing promised this generation’s Dr. Strangelove; reality delivered this generation’s Zardoz. A dense story can only come from a giant head, after all.
