Collider praised what it called Cruise\u2019s \u201cbizarre but brilliant performance\u201d, while the Daily Mail called it \u201cbold and often brilliant film-making\u201d.<\/p>\n
Showbiz Junkies, which gave it a B+, said the film was novel.<\/p>\n
\u201cDigger\u2019s a fever dream \u2013 equal parts chaos and spectacle \u2013 and guaranteed to be unlike anything you\u2019ll ever see attempted again,\u201d wrote reviewer Rebecca Murray.<\/p>\n
Digger embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity\u2019s saviour before the disaster he\u2019s unleashed destroys everything. Photo \/ Warner Bros<\/p>\n
The divided reviews are accompanied by conflicting forecasts for its opening weekend.<\/p>\n
World of Reel reported that the film could debut with ticket sales of less than US$10 million ($17.7m), while Box Office Theory projected an opening of between US$16m and US$26m.<\/p>\n
Although the estimates differ substantially, even the higher forecast would represent a modest debut for a production reported to have cost more than US$125m, the Daily Mail reported. <\/p>\n
Tom Cruise and Riz Ahmed acting up a storm in Digger. <\/p>\n
In the film, Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an eccentric oil magnate described as the world\u2019s most powerful man. Digger attempts to address an environmental catastrophe for which he is responsible.<\/p>\n
John Goodman co-stars as an authoritarian United States president. The politically charged satire examines climate change and corporate greed through the actions of its wealthy and powerful central characters.<\/p>\n
Digger is a departure from the action blockbusters that have dominated Cruise\u2019s career in recent years, particularly the Mission: Impossible franchise. It is also one of his relatively few awards-focused projects in almost three decades, according to the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n
Digger feels like a \u201chomage to Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove, with environmental disaster supplanting nuclear warfare as the principal threat to humanity\u201d, wrote the Mail\u2019s Brian Viner, who gave the film four stars out of five.<\/p>\n
Cruise, 64, has never won a competitive Academy Award, although he has previously received acting nominations. His 2022 blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick earned six Oscar nominations, including best picture. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collider praised what it called Cruise\u2019s \u201cbizarre but brilliant performance\u201d, while the Daily Mail called it \u201cbold and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6946,5195,1558,196029,7022,146855,9420,3682,228377,124,42153,6374,156,5821,593,71,293,3012,31181,15028,77220,111,139,69,95086,36200,7811,223,5134,123111,304032],"class_list":["post-617218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-actors","tag-be","tag-been","tag-bigbudget","tag-black","tag-borderline","tag-brilliant","tag-comedy","tag-complicating","tag-could","tag-cruises","tag-digger","tag-entertainment","tag-everything","tag-film","tag-from","tag-his","tag-hopes","tag-labelled","tag-landing","tag-mummy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oscar","tag-potentially","tag-since","tag-the","tag-tom","tag-unwatchable","tag-worstreviewed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}