Tom Cruise delivers a fascinating performance as Digger Rockwell, an eccentric Texas oil tycoon who causes an environmental catastrophe in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s black satire “Digger.” It echoes shades of Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” and Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “The City of Lost Children,” as Cold War paranoia is replaced by climate disaster, shifting the focus from political to corporate hubris.
When you watch a film at Cinemark, the preshow features a “Don’t Miss The Big Moment” commercial in which a confused moviegoer asks, “Wait, what?” after returning to his seat from the concession stand. I felt like that guy for the first third of “Digger.” Iñárritu hits us with a fast-paced farce, then starts dropping hints that the film’s artificial aesthetic has a reason.
Shot in VistaVision, the visual style comes from Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who won two of three Oscars for his collaborations with Iñárritu on “Birdman” (2014) and “The Revenant” (2015). Shot on 35mm, Lubezki uses desaturated colors to heighten the story’s altered reality, which, when combined with the assortment of oddball characters and the surreal atmosphere, draws a comparison to Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things.”
Hair and makeup designer Alessandro Bertolazzi and his crew spent six hours transforming Cruise into Digger with heavy facial prosthetics, false teeth, and a thinning hairpiece for a Nosferatu makeover—the creep factor enhanced by a pet cat named Maggie who looks like she crawled out of Pet Sematary. Reportedly, Cruise used a stopwatch and a chalkboard to streamline the makeup application process, cutting it to under an hour.
Cruise’s portrayal of the Texas oil tycoon may seem like an over-the-top caricature, but after spending six decades in the Lone Star State and being raised by a father who worked in the oilfield, let’s just say I’ve met my fair share of Digger Rockwell types who frequently used the D-word to compare just about everything.
Digger’s company, Rockwell United, causes the film’s eco-disaster while drilling for oil in Greenland. Several warnings from the chief of environmental safety, Dr. Nirav Ganesh (a very good, barely recognizable Riz Ahmed), that an expanding crack in a glacier, combined with subterranean methane, is a catastrophe waiting to happen, are ignored by the money-hungry tycoon, backed by goofball President Compson (John Goodman). Neither is concerned about the environment.
A massive methane explosion kills the entire Rockwell drilling crew and dislodges a colossal chunk of the glacier (nicknamed “Judy”), sending the ice shelf (the size of Maryland) hurling toward Norway. Tsunamis cause devastating floods across Northern Europe, resulting in a catastrophic loss of life and triggering a chain reaction that devastates the planet.
It’s up to Digger and an incompetent group of politicians and military personnel to save the planet. I’ll bet you can guess how that turns out. Michael Stuhlbarg plays the clueless vice president, a puppet whose strings are pulled by delusional President Compson—Goodman is even more outlandish than Cruise. Great character actor Robert John Burke brings Kubrick’s “Strangelove” vibes as the stern Military Chief of Staff, Fitzgerald, who suggests using nukes to break up the giant sheet of ice. Once again, you can guess how that works out.
We do get a few grounded characters, including Sandra Hüller as Digger’s business partner and half-sister, Emma, and Jesse Plemmons as Digger’s nephew, Kenny. Both are underused, buried in the satire, though Plemmons’s quiet intensity fits the eccentric storyline perfectly.
Several twists unfold, including a major one at the conclusion. Once I put everything into perspective, I recognized the brilliance of Iñárritu’s film, conceived 10 years ago after he completed “The Revenant.” I imagine “Digger” will divide audiences—not everyone will have the patience to wait for the reveals before passing judgment. Regardless, Tom Cruise reminds us he’s still capable of delivering a first-rate performance that highlights his skills as an accomplished actor, without resorting to thrilling action and stunts. It’s a brilliant performance. Can you dig it?
(3 ½ stars)
Now showing in theaters
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