has all the makings of a prestige hit<\/a>: an A-list star covering his handsome face in ugly prosthetics, a big important topic and an auteur who\u2019s won two Best Director Oscars. Yet if anything, those dutifully checked boxes turn out to be pitfalls. Because what this sorry satire about a Texas oil tycoon and a US president with \u201ccancer of the a\u2013hole\u201d lacks is a single funny joke or even half-believable moment.\u00a0<\/p>\nThere\u2019s plenty of obnoxious shouting in hokey Southern accents in this insufferable slog, though, and about a hundred indistinguishable grayscale cast members, all of whom look like Jacob Marley\u2019s ghost. I didn\u2019t walk out worried for the planet. However, I was gravely concerned for a couple of careers.<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohnny Oleksinski<\/p>\n
\u201cDigger\u201d marks the first time Cruise has played an original title character (\u201cJack Reacher\u201d is a novel series) since 1996\u2019s \u201cJerry Maguire.\u201d That marquee choice leads us to believe that Digger Rockwell, the \u201cyee haw!\u201d oil baron, should be a larger-than-life figure destined for classic status. Too bad he\u2019s a silly and annoying sidekick who\u2019s given too much screentime.<\/p>\n
Digger\u2019s a \u201cshoot first, ask questions later\u201d kind of guy. But he shoots himself in the foot when his advisers warn him there is a growing ice crack at a Greenland drilling site that\u2019s leaking methane gas. Uninterested and unbothered, Digger demands they carry on anyway and \u201cbank as much crude as humanly possible before they shut us down again!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA million barrels a day!\u201d he orders.<\/p>\n
Scream, scream, scream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell in \u201cDigger.\u201d Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n
But his folly (the word of the day) causes an ice shelf 10 times the size of Washington, DC, to break off and careen toward Europe, where it will cause catastrophic flooding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s here, only a half hour into this glacially paced tedium parade, that there is a major shift. Warner Bros. has asked critics not to reveal what that twist is, lest we deprive viewers the experience of rolling their eyes and groaning at it.<\/p>\n
What the shake-up kicks off, though, is a series of self-protective actions taken by the filmmakers. The audience begins to think that maybe everything we\u2019re seeing is supposed to be awful. Perhaps it\u2019s meant to be dishonest and overplayed. Could it be that the drowsy washed-out color palette doesn\u2019t need to look good onscreen?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Digger and Ganesh try to stop a breakaway ice shelf from hitting Europe. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n
In a similar and delusional meta moment later on, a character asks, \u201cWhat is this?! Is it funny? Is it supposed to be satire?\u201d That fight is wishful thinking on the part of I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and his three co-writers. Nobody will be debating this movie. It\u2019s not worth the time.<\/p>\n
Back to Digger, I guess.<\/p>\n
President Compson (John Goodman) tells the stubborn kingpin to fix the floating berg, which they dub Judy. \u201cIf northern Europe gets screwed with its pants on, it\u2019s not my problem!\u201d the prez yells, because that is all these actors are allowed to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
John Goodman plays the foul-mouthed US president. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n
Goodman\u2019s the best part of the movie, but he\u2019s only able to do so much given the constraints. Will Ferrell\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re Welcome, America,\u201d in which he played George W. Bush, looks like \u201cFrost\/Nixon\u201d next to this.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So Digger goes on a journey with a scientist named Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) to try to blow it up. Exciting? Nope. They spend minutes midflight discussing the ethics of tuna sushi \u2014 another flatlined joke I\u00f1\u00e1rritu can\u2019t construct.<\/p>\n
\u201cDigger\u201d wastes a lot of extraordinary talent. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n
Remember, though, that everything you\u2019re seeing isn\u2019t actually what you\u2019re seeing. The trouble with I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s pretentious frame story (sorry to be so vague) is that it causes us to not take about 90% of the movie seriously and to zone out for long stretches. There are no stakes to be found and no laughs to be had. There\u2019s certainly no point.<\/p>\n
There are other people in this movie, unfortunately for them.<\/p>\n
Sandra H\u00fcller is admirably committed as Digger\u2019s half-sister Emma. But because this is The Cruise Show, a lot of superb talent is wasted: Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg as the VP, Emma D\u2019Arcy as Lina and Jesse Plemons as the mysterious Kenny.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019re banished to the periphery in service of a flashy, mediocre central performance that\u2019s this film\u2019s entire reason for being. And this is not simply a case of poor Tom being trapped in a lousy movie. He\u2019s just not very good, even as a cartoony caricature with no depth. Cruise did this kind of thing vastly better when he played Les Grossman in \u201cTropic Thunder.\u201d I would\u2019ve rather seen Nicolas Cage or Woody Harrelson as Digger.<\/p>\n
Cruise should come back to more serious roles after \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d and \u201cTop Gun.\u201d But \u201cDigger\u201d? Risky business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"movie review DIGGER Running time: 128 minutes. Rated R (pervasive language). In theaters Oct. 2. Movie? Impossible. Tom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[157,134938,9409,158,9,11,10,39877],"class_list":["post-363500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-entertainment","tag-john-goodman","tag-movie-reviews","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}