Inarritu lays bare the hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement of the Western world in this wildly ambitious meta-satire, with Tom Cruise playing a caricature of an irresponsibly powerful white billionaire caught in a catastrophic global crisis of his own making.
Review #3,104
Dir. Alejandro G. Inarritu
2026 | USA | Drama, Comedy | 129min | 1.85:1 | English
M18 (passed clean) for pervasive language
Cast: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke
Plot: The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.
Awards: –
Distributor: Warner
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Western Hypocrisy; Global Crisis; Meta-Satire
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Shaw Lido IMAX
Spoilers: No
After the meandering mess that was Bardo (2022), Digger marks a swift return to form for one of the world’s most interesting filmmakers. Alejandro G. Inarritu’s ability to channel what some might deem the “pretentiousness” of art cinema into Hollywood studio filmmaking remains intact.
Having moved beyond the rawer, more earnest filmmaking of his pre-Birdman (2014) period, Inarritu has become a purveyor of large-scale experiential cinema.
Whether through the incredibly immersive visual and sonic rhythms of Birdman (that drum score still kicks ass after all these years) or the contemplative survival anti-epic that was The Revenant (2015), he has pushed popular cinema into territory he can call his own: unpredictable, elemental, galvanizing, provocative, and self-indulgent.
Digger emerges from this artistic sensibility while pursuing similarly ambitious commercial goals. With Tom Cruise in the lead, the film could prove a surefire hit, a box-office flop (well, as of this posting, it is one of the worst flops of all time), or a modern cult classic a decade or two down the road.
It has the makings of a film that might even achieve a more enduring cult status than his compatriot Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), the dystopian sci-fi classic that found its audience over time.
“When all else fails, you hit ’em with the truth. Hit ’em with the hard truth. Just bang, bang, bang! Whoo! Whoo!”
With Warner Bros. doing all it can to promote Digger’s “polarising” nature, there is hope that Cruise might finally win that elusive Oscar. His performance as the titular figure—a larger-than-life, brutally blunt, and irresponsibly powerful white billionaire—is amusing to watch.
He plays a caricature as cartoonish as Peter Sellers in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) and as rhetorically commanding as Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941).The supporting cast, including Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, and Michael Stuhlbarg, is equally stellar.
As the environmental devastation wrought by unchecked oil drilling threatens to unleash a global catastrophe that could kill hundreds of millions, Digger’s responsibility is to rescue not the world but his own image as the man behind the crisis.
An intelligent meta-satire in which grand, performative gestures expose the folly of Man, Digger lays bare the hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement of the Western world—and, more pointedly, everything wrong with pompous, dim-witted white men wielding too much power and capital.
Its construction is deliberately fluid and its form malleable, qualities that will likely throw off casual moviegoers who approach it with rigid expectations. My only gripe is a subplot involving Jesse Plemons’s character that doesn’t quite add much to the narrative.
Grade: A-
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