At the risk of suggesting that Alejandro González Iñárritu change the first letter in the title of his catastrophe (and nigh-catastrophic) comedy Digger, the auteur’s latest swing for the fences could just as easily be called Bigger. Shot on VistaVision for premium formats and carrying a budget that bubbled up to $180 million after production delays, the distended satire at least has the courtesy to let you see where all of that money ended up. The immaculate production design, led by Academy Award winner Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson, is some of the finest you’re likely to see this year — any year, really. Every frame is so rich with detail, so packed with visual clues into how this exquisite world revolves, the film practically flows off the edges of the screen and extends infinitely in every direction. It’s the digging beyond this spectacular surface that proves perilous.
In his most intrepid performance since 2008’s Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise leads the way as Digger Rockwell, a rowdy, rootin’ tootin’ oil tycoon who oversees extraction facilities all over the world. After brushing off numerous warnings from his team in Greenland, methane released from drilling the ice below the production plant has led to a massive explosion. Now, not only is their platform on fire but a gigantic ice shelf has separated from the coast and, according to Rockwell United’s Head of Environmental Safety and Security Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), is on its way to Norway. With no time to waste, U.S. President Compson (John Goodman) and members of his cabinet rush over to Digger’s mansion and put their heads together as to how to run damage control before the rogue iceberg spells disaster for European sea levels.
By design, Iñárritu positions Cruise, and his larger-than-life persona on and off the screen, at the epicenter of Digger and for the film’s opening stretch, it’s a gamble that mostly pays off. Peripheral characters, like Digger’s sister Emma (Sandra Hüller) and his assistant Lina (Emma D’Arcy), float in and out of his orbit as he scrambles from one lavish room to another. Before the fracking fracas commences, the morning’s first emergency is the immediate health concerns of Digger’s geriatric cat Maggie and it’s immediately clear he doesn’t take bad news well. When the on-call veterinarian comes in to give the latest on her myriad ailments, Digger hastily fires him and seeks the counsel of his personal doc instead; “Yes, you are an expert, and you are not remotely afraid to disappoint me,” Digger barks at the vet before dismissing him.
It’s not surprising that the primary Digger trailer that’s been playing in theaters the past few months has literally been two and a half minutes of a Tom Cruise retrospective, followed by 30 seconds of actual footage from the movie. There’s star power, there’s bankability and then there’s whatever level of religious-adjacent fervor Cruise and his team are hoping to inspire with this marketing. The miscalculation is in putting the type of character he’s playing as the film’s gravitational force, since Digger is quite a chore to spend long periods of time with. If you look at Cruise’s most “off-brand” roles, like Les Grossman from the aforementioned Tropic Thunder or his tell-it-like-it-is pickup artist from Magnolia, there’s a reason these fellas aren’t our protagonists. Cruise is working as hard here as when he’s performing his death-defying stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise but Iñárritu and his three credited co-writers don’t have his back.
Early on, Digger treats a subordinate to an anecdote about how he hit a home run as a kid in the only one of his baseball games that his grandfather attended. He wasn’t impressed, commenting that hitting it out of the park is easy but actually having to run the bases for a triple is more challenging: “Triples is what’s impressive. Triples requires hustle,” he determined. It’s a meta commentary not only on Cruise and the effort he puts into his work but also on Iñárritu and his career. If winning back-to-back Best Director Oscars for Birdman and The Revenant in the mid-2010s qualify as his “home runs”, then Bardo and now Digger solidify that he’s in his “triples” era. They’re not films that work for everyone but he’s certainly working hard to make them happen. The same can be said for Warner Bros., whose big bets on visionary directors also gave us two of last year’s best films in One Battle After Another and Sinners. Digger marks the studio’s final release before their imminent acquisition by Paramount Skydance and while the shift in strategies remains uncertain, I’ll miss their triples.
Score – 2.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Other Mommy, a supernatural horror film starring Jessica Chastain and Jay Duplass, which follows a mother who must do everything to protect her 8-year-old daughter from a supernatural entity that resembles her.
Also coming to theaters is The Social Reckoning, a legal thriller starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White, which tells the true story of a young Facebook engineer and a Wall Street Journal reporter working together to blow the whistle on the social network’s most guarded secrets.
Streaming on Netflix is Animals, a crime thriller starring Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington, centering around a mayoral candidate and his wife as they resort to extreme measures in paying the ransom for their kidnapped son.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup