Digger (MA)
Starring: Tom Cruise, John Goodman
Directed by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Review by: Julian Wright
The world is on the verge of a catastrophic disaster – nice guy Tom Cruise to the rescue?
Nope, this time he is the cause of the impending death and destruction in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s satirical Digger.
While nursing his barely alive, decomposing cat Maggie in his mansion estate, endlessly wealthy oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) finds out that his reckless drilling activities in Greenland has caused a devastating tragedy.
The land has split, creating a 400-mile-wide glacier, that is now heading straight to the coast of Europe, and should collide in about three days.
With little time and few options (blowing up the glacier would only create hundreds more problems), Digger, cancer riddled President Compson (John Goodman) and his various advisers, must get ahead of the narrative before the world finds out the USA is at fault.
To Cruise’s credit, the often-criticised Hollywood action hero does occasionally step away from the Mission Impossible series and heroic roles to be either vulnerable (Eyes Wide Shut) or downright unlikeable (Magnolia).
Even his role as the not-very-fatherly dad in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster War of the Worlds was against type.
And in Digger, under the fat suit, prosthetics and aging makeup, he is scarily convincing as a slimy billionaire.
Iñárritu delivers at times what seems like a live-action episode of South Park with such direct, derogatory characterisations of its targets – John Goodman is so deliciously ridiculously over the top, complemented by deeply unflattering angles.
Digger starts out as one thing and then there is quite a rug-pull moment that is at first baffling, but if you can stay on board with it, there are fascinating themes rewardingly explored.
Even if you find you are not on Digger’s wavelength – or perhaps you are on and off it at any given moment (fair), there is no denying this is a massively ambitious creation that you have not seen at the cinema before.
Without giving too much away, Digger not only satirises imbeciles with wealth and power, but also looks at how artists and audiences reconcile past disasters through art, the catharsis it can bring and how important art it is in dealing with the related trauma, even decades later.
In a sense, it is similar to this year’s emotionally devastating Hamnet, and yet this is nothing like Hamnet.
