One of the most divided movies of 2026 is DIGGER. There is no way around it. Coming from legendary filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, this is also no surprise as the man refuses to compromise. Accept no substitutes, as they say! Both Paul & I take a look at the attention-grabbing new Tom Cruise picture.
Paul’s Reaction: You knew Warner Brothers realized they had a $180M turkey on their hands when they refused to make this most auteurist of big budget films available to the fall film festival circuit. In fact, anticipating divided critical support, they actually had ads prepared in advance of this week’s theatrical release contrasting the extremely polarized reviews and asking audiences to decide for themselves. Interestingly, the most positive reviews have come mainly from Europe, with American reviews being the most dismissive. Not surprising perhaps, because the film is resolutely anti-American, or at least anti-Trumpian. Trump is a global warming denier and his mantra when it comes to fossil fuels has been “drill, baby, drill”. Hence the title “Digger” and its exaggerated depiction of a capitalist oil-extractor run amock. Wearing a fat suit, wrinkles and a balding tuft of hair, Tom Cruise seems to have great fun incarnating a vile oil executive whose drilling in Greenland results in a massive explosion and the release of methane gas on a scale that could result in the loss of many European lives, following the unmooring of a massive ice floe and a resulting mega-tsunami . Upon being told that his drilling operation has exploded and resulted in the deaths of dozens of employees, Digger’s only real concern is whether his oil rig has been irreparably damaged. He lives in a huge castle-like home decorated with hunting trophies and seems emotionally committed only to a dying cat. Digger’s family name is Rockwell, not Rockefeller, but we get the picture. Similarly we kinda recognize who John Goodman is trying to evoke as a glowering amoral President of the United States with a major rectal medical problem. This is unsubtle political satire, going for a Dr. Strangelove sort of over-the-top vibe. Inarritu is swinging for the rafters, and you can’t help admiring his ambition. In fact, the first hour or so of the film is unsubtle but kinda fun as it satirizes the old white guys who are in positions of power and would not hesitate to destroy the planet if it was good for business. But then Innaritu hoists himself on his own petard. He tries to be way too clever for his own sake and in redefining all that we have seen up to that point, he kinda flies off the rails at the half-way mark, in ways from which the film never recovers. The last hour nevertheless contains one barn-burner of a lengthy diatribe in which Cruise shines while accusing us all of being unwilling to give up our creature comforts, and the final meta switch just prior to the final credits, which is rather brilliant as a coda to the film.
But here is the real tragedy of this ambitious but flawed bit of political satire painted on a grand scale. The film will flop and lose a lot of money despite the star power of Tom Cruise (this is not how his fans want to see him). It will probably be the last time we will ever see a film like this produced by a Hollywood studio. That is because this week, the purchase of Warner Brothers by Paramount Pictures received final regulatory approval. Warner Brothers has historically been the one studio that most supported auteurs with grand visions: every Kubrick film from Clockwork Orange to Eyes Wide Shut, Christopher Nolan films like Tenet and Interstellar, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune series, All the President’s Men, One Battle After Another, Blade Runner, Mad Max, The Matrix, Unforgiven (and just about every Clint Eastwood movie since Dirty Harry), Dog Day Afternoon, and the list goes on and on. David Ellison, the head of Paramount, and a supporter of Donald Trump, has promised that the combined studios will deliver 30 motion pictures per year after the merger. But what kind of movies? Looking at Paramount’s release schedule this year, it looks like a constant diet of action oriented films aimed at the red meat segment of the audience: Brad Pitt as an ex-Special Ops military man in Heart of the Beast, Mark Wahlberg as a mob hit man in By Any Means, sequels to Scary Movie and Scream and Paw Patrol and Mission Impossible and Top Gun. Not a whiff of auteurial creativity and certainly nothing that could be construed as being even remotely critical of the current American administration.
So mourn the death of a Warner Brothers that would have the bravery to even consider financing a film like Digger. Despite the fact that Digger doesn’t really work, admire its outsized ambition. Go and see Digger not because it is particularly accomplished, but because it truly represents the end of an era. Here’s betting you will never see anything like it again, at least not from a major American studio.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Jason’s Reaction: This is all my kind of weird. DIGGER is some kind of whacked out gem from the crazed mind of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and is more in line with the likes of his 2014 Best Picture Birdman and the more recent Bardo than any of his other works. It’s grand, profane, loud and all sorts of crazy/weird that is going to have some moviegoers walk out halfway through and demand refunds (which DID happen at the screening I attended), and part of me completely understands this.
The political satire of course reminded me of the best parts of Dr. Strangelove, but of course it isn’t as timeless or as relevant as the Kubrick masterpiece. That movie is on my all time Top 10 of comedy, but I also couldn’t help but notice the jabs to both left-right in terms of business, the environment and where we are headed. Where the movie surprised me (which I should also offer as a spoiler warning) is that we soon learn that this entire story is a long-running play by actors long in the tooth. That transition DID throw me both story-wise AND visual-wise but for me, this was a brilliant technique.
Again, this movie has already polarized audiences with many being able to not bear it’s dynamic look, profane language and aeven Tom Cruise’s uncanny look. All of this is also being under the major studio system at a very high cost. I was reminded quite a bit of Mickey 17, Bong Joon-Ho’s english language breakthrough to the US, another major Warner movie that dared to try something different and lost a lot of money in the process.
With all of that said, this movie still is a breathtaking experience and another great film from Mr. Inarritu who flat-out refuses to compromise his vision. I do feel this movie will find a life down the road eventually and I DO know it has its fans already. If you do like it, please spread the word of course!
Rating: 9 out of 10
Boring Tech Notes: I did mention some of the aspect ratio in my reaction, but just as a note that this movie has multiple aspect ratios for the “in-play” sequences, which are shot in the horizontal, 8-perf Vistavision frame (The Brutalist & One Battle After Another were also shot this way). When the movie goes into the “other” mode in the story it’s in the full 1.85 frame from a digitally shot origin. Either way, Vistavision is BACK and I couldn’t be happier that this and 65mm shot films are getting a new lease on life. The movie will be available in the 8-perf film format but will be digital for the most part in its release, but as always just seek out the theatre near you that takes care of their projection and sound.
