Digger Review: Tom Cruise takes a different route, but does the gamble pay off?

Digger review: Tom Cruise takes on a bizarre new avatar in Alejandro González Iñárritu's environmental and political satire, and plays the biggest gamble of his career.

You have seen Tom Cruise for years, in different avatars, and probably most of us love him for how he has done all the gravity-defying and age-defying stunts all by himself through the years. However, what we have not seen Cruise do is play an even older oil tycoon with a paunch belly, wrinkled skin, drunk on power and with zero care about the consequences in an environmental and political satire by Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Iñárritu is also behind the story, along with Sabina Berman and Jez Butterworth. Berman and Iñárritu have also worked on the screenplay with Nicolás Giacobone and Alexander Dinelaris. And the film, to me, can best be described as wild, audacious, zany and bizarre in its own way. It will either leave you infuriated or walking out satisfied, but hardly on any middle ground.

For me, it was absolutely worth the 129 minutes.

Tom Cruise steps away from the action hero

The biggest gamble Digger takes is with Tom Cruise himself. We are used to seeing him run, jump, fight, climb, fly and generally put his body through things that most actors would leave to a stunt double. Here, however, the physical transformation is part of the performance.

As Digger Rockwell, Cruise is almost unrecognisable. The paunch, the prosthetics, the ageing skin, the thinning hair and the mannerisms turn him into a man who looks like he has spent decades believing that the world exists for his benefit.

And Cruise commits to it completely. He is loud, opinionated, selfish, arrogant and often downright infuriating. There is a cartoonish quality to the character, but Cruise understands exactly what kind of performance Iñárritu is asking for. He leans into the absurdity of a man who has accumulated so much wealth and power that even an environmental catastrophe becomes another problem he believes he can throw money and influence at.

This is also where the film becomes interesting for Cruise fans. We have seen the actor play larger-than-life characters countless times, but rarely one who is so unpleasant and so removed from the heroic image associated with him.

There are moments when the performance feels deliberately excessive. But there are also quieter stretches where the character unexpectedly reveals another layer. Cruise's commitment to the role is impossible to ignore, and this is easily one of the most interesting performances of his career.

If the Academy is looking for a way to recognise Cruise beyond the action-star persona, I can genuinely see this performance entering the Oscar conversation.

A satire that takes aim at almost everyone

At its heart, Digger is about capitalism and environmental destruction. An oil tycoon helps create a catastrophe and then tries to position himself as the man capable of saving the world from it. The irony is hardly hidden.

But Iñárritu isn't satisfied with taking a shot at billionaires and corporations. The film also takes jabs at hypernationalism, racism, patriarchy, political opportunism and the way religion can be used whenever it is convenient. There is a particularly interesting thread running through the film about how people cling to their beliefs when those beliefs benefit them, and abandon them just as quickly when circumstances change.

The politicians are absurd. The businessmen are absurd. The people who claim moral superiority are also given enough room to expose their own contradictions.

John Goodman, as President Compson, fits perfectly into this strange universe. He plays the President with a kind of terrifying bluster, surrounded by people who seem more interested in protecting power than actually dealing with the catastrophe unfolding around them.

Sandra Hüller also brings a different energy as Digger's half-sister Emma. Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and the rest of the supporting cast add to the film's deliberately heightened world.

Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, the scientist who is far more grounded than the people surrounding him. His look in the film is so reminiscent of Fahadh Faasil that it becomes impossible not to notice, especially because Ganesh's character has roots in Kerala. Ahmed has himself spoken about the connection, explaining that he chose Kerala as Ganesh's place of origin and was aware of the comparisons only after audiences pointed them out.

And given that Fahadh had actually auditioned for the role before Ahmed eventually got it, the resemblance makes the casting story even more intriguing. I liked Ahmed in the film, but I couldn't help thinking that having Fahadh in this world would have been an interesting missed opportunity.

A huge part of why Digger worked for me was its cinematography. Emmanuel Lubezki shoots the film in a way that makes the world feel almost artificially constructed, as if we are looking at a civilisation that has already started decaying. The muted colours, greys, washed-out creams and deliberately controlled palette create a dystopian atmosphere without needing to constantly tell us that the world is in trouble.

The colour itself feels sick. There is very little warmth in the world Digger inhabits, and even the enormous interiors and elaborate sets have something strangely clinical about them. The film's production design, by Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson, is equally important here, creating spaces that feel theatrical, surreal and slightly unreal. Recent reviews have particularly singled out the combination of Lubezki's photography and the elaborate production design.

The VistaVision photography also gives the film a scale that suits its absurdity. There are frames that feel almost like paintings, but the beauty is often uncomfortable because what you are looking at is a world heading towards collapse.

And then there are the silences. For a film that can be incredibly loud, the quiet moments are surprisingly effective. They allow the atmosphere to settle in, and sometimes make the absurdity more unsettling.

I can understand why Digger may divide audiences. The satire is hardly subtle, the characters are exaggerated and the film repeatedly pushes itself towards the edge of absurdity. But, there is something refreshing about a filmmaker making a film this unapologetically strange at a time when big-budget Hollywood cinema often feels increasingly safe.

Digger takes a massive swing. Sometimes it gets very close to the line between audacious and excessive, but for me, that excess is part of its charm. The film is also surprisingly entertaining despite dealing with environmental collapse, political dysfunction and humanity's rather uncomfortable relationship with greed.

This film doesn't give you a neat, comforting answer. Instead, it leaves you wondering whether the people destroying the world are actually the problem, or whether all of us are complicit in the systems that allow them to keep doing it.

So, does the gamble pay off? For me, yes.

Digger is strange. It is excessive. It is loud. It is occasionally ridiculous and deliberately uncomfortable. But it is also visually arresting, ambitious and packed with ideas. And, it gives Tom Cruise a character we have never really seen him play before and allows him to remind us that there is an actor underneath the movie-star persona.

Iñárritu has made a film that takes aim at capitalism, environmental destruction, hypernationalism, religion, racism and patriarchy, while also turning the lens towards cinema itself. The twist adds another layer, Lubezki's cinematography gives the film a distinctive dystopian identity, and the performances commit fully to the bizarre world the filmmaker has created.

It will not be a film that everyone walks out loving. But I walked out satisfied. And after watching Tom Cruise spend years trying to save the world in increasingly impossible ways, seeing him play the man who may have helped destroy it is quite a refreshing change.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Digger is currently running in theatres across the world.