Tom Cruise stars in Iñárritu's climate-disaster satire 'Digger'

Alejandro G. Iñárritu's 'Digger' casts Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a paunchy, aging Texas oil tycoon whose environmental negligence triggers a catastrophic crisis when his Arctic drilling operation causes a massive ice floe—larger than Manhattan—to break free from Greenland and drift toward Europe. Shot in VistaVision by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the film blends exaggerated farce, operatic scale, and political satire to address climate change, with Cruise delivering a boisterous performance supported by John Goodman as US President Compson and Riz Ahmed as a conflicted company scientist named Ganesh.

The film deliberately eschews subtlety. Cruise's character inhabits a lavish mansion filled with taxidermy and polar bear rugs, displaying prosthetic makeup and a Texan drawl reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove.' When the Arctic crisis unfolds, Rockwell positions himself at the center of government response, ultimately delivering a defiant defense of oil to a UN-like body, arguing the world remains dependent on fossil fuels despite moral objections. The narrative reportedly contains high-concept plot twists that reshape viewer understanding of the established story.

Critical reception remains sharply divided. Reviewers praise Lubezki's cinematography and the film's visual ambition, calling it an "uncommon major studio release" as urgent as 'An Inconvenient Truth' but far more operatic. However, critics consistently fault the satire for lacking comedic punch—Cruise is no Peter Sellers and Iñárritu no Kubrick, one reviewer noted—with exasperatingly shallow characterization and laborious pacing undermining its political goals. Some argue the plot twists feel unearned, enclosing the central narrative within inverted commas rather than fully dramatizing their implications. The film is characterized as a "love-it-or-hate-it" gamble that represents Cruise's biggest career risk beyond stunt work, likely to alienate mainstream audiences while resonating with those willing to engage its conceptually challenging eco-satire.

The supporting cast includes Sandra Hüller and Michael Stuhlbarg, though both reportedly have limited screen time. The script was co-written by Iñárritu alongside four other writers. The film's extreme production design and prosthetic choices—from Cruise's hair styling to the animatronic cat—signal Iñárritu's commitment to visual artifice as thematic reinforcement of the narrative's absurdist stance.