Digger review: Tom Cruise is wonderfully unhinged in this wild climate satire

Tom Cruise has spent the better part of the last decade running, flying, jumping, climbing and generally reminding us that movie stars are supposed to do things. Digger is everything anti-Cruise-que image that we have come to know. He stands still, puts on a prosthetic belly, grows a thinning head of hair, and plays a billionaire oil tycoon who may have helped cause the end of the world.

It is, in other words, exactly the kind of left turn that makes Cruise interesting again. Directed by Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, Digger stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a powerful Texas oil magnate whose drilling operation in Greenland triggers an ecological catastrophe. When a gigantic ice mass breaks away and threatens Europe, Digger sets out to fix the disaster he helped create, while simultaneously trying to establish himself as the man capable of saving humanity. Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde round out the ensemble.

The premise is almost aggressively ridiculous. The fascinating part is that Irritu isn't interested in making it merely ridiculous. There is a very particular kind of arrogance to Digger. He has accumulated so much wealth and power that the consequences have become an inconvenience rather than a reality. When scientists warn him that his operations are causing catastrophic damage, his instinct isn’t remorse. It is problem-solving, preferably the kind that allows him to remain the person in charge.

Cruise understands that absurdity beautifully. Digger is not a subtle man, and Cruise isn’t playing him subtly. The accent is broad, the physical transformation deliberately grotesque and the performance frequently borders on caricature. Yet there is method beneath the madness. Cruise makes Digger’s confidence almost childlike: he genuinely believes that every problem has a solution if you are powerful enough, rich enough or simply loud enough.

It is a fascinating inversion of the Cruise persona. For years, his screen image has been built around competence. Ethan Hunt may be battered, exhausted and occasionally terrified, but he can still fly the plane. Digger is what happens when that same confidence is attached to a man who has helped create the disaster in the first place.

He wants to be the hero of a story in which he is also the problem. That idea gives Digger its sharpest comic edge. Irritu, working with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicols Giacobone and Sabina Berman, builds the film as an increasingly surreal collision of climate satire, disaster movie and dark comedy. It occasionally recalls the political absurdity of Dr Strangelove, while its media consciousness brings to mind Network and its climate anxiety inevitably sits in the shadow of Don’t Look Up. But Digger is less interested in making a tidy argument than in creating a world where everyone is performing their version of reality.

That makes some of its best scenes genuinely unpredictable. One particularly effective sequence involves Digger addressing a global gathering as the crisis spirals. For once, the film pauses its manic energy and allows the character to articulate the uncomfortable idea that environmental destruction isn’t sustained by a handful of villains alone. Entire economies, industries and lifestyles are built around the system.

It is one of the rare moments when Digger stops shouting and starts thinking. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t always know when to stop.

Irritu’s visual ambition is considerable. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography and the production design create a world that feels both lavish and faintly diseased, with Digger’s enormous mansion functioning almost like a monument to excess. The film was shot using VistaVision, and its scale is unmistakably designed for the theatrical experience.

But maximalism can become exhausting. Ideas are introduced, pushed further, then pushed further again. A joke that might have worked once gets repeated until it becomes a statement. A surreal image that initially intrigues is sometimes followed by another surreal image simply because the film can.

This is where Digger risks becoming too much like its protagonist. Digger cannot stop digging. Irritu sometimes cannot stop adding.

The supporting cast is largely strong, even when the screenplay gives them less room than they deserve. Riz Ahmed brings nervous intelligence to scientist Ganesh, the man who has been warning Digger about the consequences of his actions. Sandra Huller brings an appropriately combustible energy, while John Goodman embraces the film’s broader political absurdity. Sophie Wilde, in particular, brings a grounded quality to a film that frequently threatens to float away into abstraction.

Still, Digger ultimately belongs to Cruise. There is something oddly liberating about watching one of Hollywood’s most controlled movie stars play a man who is completely incapable of controlling himself. Cruise commits to every strange choice: the physical transformation, the vanity, the bluster and the moments where the performance suddenly becomes more vulnerable than expected.

It doesn’t always work. But I would rather watch a film take a swing this strange and occasionally miss than sand down every rough edge until there is nothing left to argue about.

Digger is messy, excessive and sometimes self-conscious to a fault. It is also visually audacious, unexpectedly funny and anchored by a performance that reminds you why Tom Cruise remains such a compelling movie star when he steps outside the machinery that made him one.

And that, more than the spectacle, is what makes Digger worth digging into. The film releases on October 2, 2026, in India.- EndsRead more | All you need to know about Digger as Tom Cruise goes from action hero to oil tycoon

Bhavna is passionate about dramas and films and loves writing about them. Currently oscillating between K-content, BTS and Bollywood, Bhavna dreams of an epic crossover between both the worlds.