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Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has often been a polarising filmmaker. Depending on your view, his style is either bravura technical audacity or pure indulgence. At his best, his wild trickery amplifies compelling characters. Birdman<\/em>‘s single shot echoes a man\u2019s inability to escape himself. The Revenant<\/em>‘s relentless bloody chaos reflects the savagery of a man\u2019s life, inside and out. One of many frustrating things about Digger<\/em> is that all I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s exquisite staging and narrative Russian doll-ing aren\u2019t in service of anything particularly effective. The presentation is challenging but Digger<\/em> doesn\u2019t dig very deep.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u00f1\u00e1rritu kicks us into his film like a boot from behind. The titular character, an elderly oil tycoon played by Tom Cruise encased in prosthetics from balding head to bum crack, is roused from bed by an urgent call. Within minutes, one of Digger\u2019s Arctic oil fields has ruptured, an iceberg named Judy is on her way to decimate Scandinavia, the US President\u2019s on the phone, and the end of the world looks distinctly possible. There\u2019s no time to steady yourself. The dizzying momentum continues as Digger (sort of) tries to avert Armageddon.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n For a film about the complexity of mankind, it shows scant interest in actual people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n This becomes wearing rather than exciting because there\u2019s nobody for us to grip onto as we hurtle along. We\u2019re as adrift as Judy amid a sea of characters with little interior life. Digger is a bumptious blowhard. A fantastic supporting cast \u2014 Sandra H\u00fcller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons \u2014 each play a single note. Only Riz Ahmed, as a conflicted scientist who could have bumbled in from a Wes Anderson picture, has any dimension. An early meta twist tries to give the story some grounding and explain away the cartoonishness, but it doesn\u2019t entirely make sense, even by its own logic, and functions mostly as a way for I\u00f1\u00e1rritu to comment on his own work. This is the film\u2019s chief problem\u2014 that it appears more concerned with itself than with the audience. Its apparent message \u2014 that the planet\u2019s dying and we\u2019re complicit, as much as we crave villains to blame \u2014 is delivered in almost hectoring terms, often in loud monologues. For a film about the complexity of mankind, it shows scant interest in actual people.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n If the whole isn\u2019t successful, elements are. Emmanuel Lubezki\u2019s cinematography and Dennis Gassner\u2019s production design achieve the Kubrickian grandeur I\u00f1\u00e1rritu clearly intends. Cruise emerges with a win, reminding us how riveting he can be as an actor, not just as a movie star. A role so oversized and absurd demands fearless commitment, which he certainly gives. The big swing is laudable. If only the film were more rewarding.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n Visually impressive, and Cruise gives his all. But Digger doesn\u2019t have much going on beneath the surface. A disappointing waste of a superb team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), a billionaire oil tycoon, has his life thrown into disarray when one of his oil plants causes a potentially apocalyptic disaster. Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has often been a polarising filmmaker. Depending on your view, his style is either bravura technical audacity or pure indulgence. At his best, his wild trickery amplifies compelling characters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15005,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15003\/revisions\/15005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Digger\"](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/digger.jpg\")
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