Movie Review: In ‘Digger,’ a ‘Dr. Strangelove’ for the climate change era

"Digger" by Alejandro G. Iñárritu is an over-the-top, climate-disaster satire that teeters on the brink, much like the fate of the world itself. Starring Tom Cruise, the film is a grandiose plate-spinning act that juggles exaggerated farce, sober anxieties, and an oil-mad Cruise. Iñárritu, known for his bold vision, delivers a movie that is unapologetically larger than life.

The film opens with Digger Rockwell, played by Cruise, waking up in his lavish, wood-paneled home surrounded by antlers, taxidermy, and polar bear rugs. Digger, an oil magnate, corrupts nature, and the pristine, unnatural view outside his window only adds to the unsettling atmosphere. As calls come flooding in from a massive oil drilling platform in Greenland, Digger charmingly uses baseball metaphors to convince scientists to increase the daily barrels pumped.

Iñárritu's typically hectic tempo, working from a script by himself and four others, is evident throughout. Cruise's character, a cowboy cartoon, launches into the dialogue with a torrent of good-ol'-boy talk, proudly wielding a shovel that represents his family's oil business. The cinematography, shot in VistaVision by Emmanuel Lubezki, gives the film a larger-than-life, carnivalesque quality.

When a glacier crack and methane leak from the seabed are worrying scientists, Digger, with a ringmaster's flair, mounts an emphatic defense of oil as "the mother's milk of Earth." His argument, though not irrationally bizarre, questions whether the world was truly prepared to go without it. Things take a turn for the apocalyptic when an ice shelf nicknamed "Judy," five times the size of Washington, D.C., breaks free of Greenland and begins steering toward Europe.

The film as we experience it is, in fact, a play being staged. This meta dimension of "Digger" raises questions about the value of satire and the limits of fiction, ultimately leading to a dark, fateful place. Tom Cruise's portrayal of Digger, a caricature of male ego, joins his ranks of extreme performances. However, it's the quieter, foreboding moments of his performance that leave a lasting impact.

Despite mixed reactions, "Digger" remains an uncommon major studio release, urgent and operatic, a of-the-moment big swing that's unlikely to come along again soon.