Digger: A provocatively grim satire

Digger (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.11.26

This film is for folks who felt that 2021’s Don’t Look Up was insufficiently cynical and depressing.

 

Director Alejnadro G. Iñárritu’s dark-dark-dark comedy is highlighted by a bravura performance by Tom Cruise, successfully operating leagues out of his usual wheelhouse.

 

Despite his best reasoned, well-researched arguments, U.S. Environmental Safety Chief
Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed, left) is unable to persuade oil tycoon Digger Rockwell
(Tom Cruise) that his massive oil extraction operations are dangerous.

The result is a brutally bleak cautionary saga that hits the target because so much of its script — by Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman and Jez Butterworth — is an uncomfortably accurate reflection of contemporary, real-world behavior by out-of-control power brokers.

It's also a disconcerting parable about the potentially calamitous results of stubbornly rash behavior by one authoritarian individual, unchecked by compliant government entities. (Sound familiar?)

 

On top of which, the horrifying “gimmick” revealed, during this saga’s second and third acts, is so clever that it shall not be discussed here.

 

But consider this analogy: What if Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove had been made 20 years after an actual global nuclear catastrophe, with the intent of allowing the survivors of our forever poisoned planet the cathartic opportunity to witness and jeer the venal, selfish and idiotic behavior of those who had caused the crisis?

 

With that in mind...

 

Iñárritu opens on a typical morning in the life of aging, overweight and jowly oil magnate Digger Rockwell (Cruise, all but unrecognized beneath astonishing makeup and prosthetics). Within seconds, we understand that this man is accustomed to always getting his way. On this particular morning, he’s concerned solely with his beloved but very, veryold and ailing cat: little more than bones and tufts of white fur.

 

The cat looks “off,” and behaves quite strangely. (Hold that thought.)

 

Iñárritu’s handling of these early scenes — and all that follow — is disorienting, bizarre and off-putting. Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s color palette is muted, bereft of bright colors; everything seems washed-out, as if saturated by a dull brown fog. (Impatient viewers might be inclined to give up. Don’t.)

 

A visit from world-renowned veterinarian Dr. Berg (Ross Hart) proves as unsatisfying as the insistence — by Emma (Sandra Hüller), Digger’s half-sister and business partner — that mercy should be granted the poor creature. 

 

This decision is set aside when Digger gets some seriously bad news.