“Digger”
The latest from revered filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu is a shocking disappointment, a meandering muddle more akin to his last effort, “Bardo” (2022). than his Oscar-caliber dramas like “Birdman” (2014) or “The Revenant” (2016). For the first hour we are subjected to one of the most bombastic, self-indulgent projects by a master helmsman since Francis Ford Coppola’s urban architecture mishegas, “Megalopolis” (2024).
The backdrop of “Digger” involves a “Cats”-like cultural phenomena called “Fossil Fools” — I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers. Tom Cruise, as the paunchy, cantankerous oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, is tight enough with the POTUS (John Goodman) that he can get the leader of the free world and his military advisors to come meet with him at his ancestral estate (badly in need of roof repairs).
There’s a lot of white people with money in “Digger,” which hints at having something to say about inherited wealth, white power structures and Christian values (for an example of a movie that addresses these issues well, see “One Battle After Another”). Those are just mirages, an exhausting exercise for the audience, which is forced to endure all-for-naught zaniness such as a 30-year-old cat with diarrhea using Digger’s sprawling bed as a litter box. It’s like Iñárritu morphed into Wes Anderson on a bad acid-trip.
The crisis du jour is that Digger’s oil company has caused a fissure in the Greenland icecap, and a massive, methane-fueled eruption has calved an iceberg the size of New England, which, as Digger’s chief scientist (Riz Ahmed) tells us is on a crash course with Scandinavia. Millions of lives could be lost but Digger’s biggest concern is the potential damage to his oil equipment. That, and how to spin the whole fiasco so as to not be on the hook for it.
It’s “Don’t Look Up” (2021) sans the humor and wit, but with an insufferable amount of shouting by Cruise, Goodman and the normally infallible Suzane Heller (“Anatomy of a Fall,” “Project Hail Mary”), who is wasted as Digger’s half-sister. For nearly half the film it’s the Bickersons bellowing on about their own selfish self-interests. Just when you wish you had a remote to hit the pause button or at least mute the pointless aural assault, Iñárritu’s lens pulls out and there’s a frame-within-a-frame reveal — something he did so masterfully in “Birdman”—that refocuses our attentions and gives us renewed intrigue.
For all its flaws, “Digger” is an ambitious undertaking. The age-defying actor shoulders the satirical sojourn into mayhem well, though he sometimes feels too effusive, almost like he’s distracted by being Tom Cruise, movie star. The cast’s biggest problem is the script, written by a committee of five. It lacks teeth, cadence or much of a pulse until late in the game, when we finally see what the mysterious X-factor — Jesse Plemmons dressed like like a slick hipster-poser — intends to do.
Almost worth the price of admission by themselves are the top-shelf set designs and cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, who won two of his three Oscars collaborating with Iñárritu on “Birdman” and “The Revenant.” There’s a great scene grab Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” (1962), though it gets a shade across the line of homage. That darn pure white cat keeps popping up. But the passel of baroque distractions can’t mask the fact that “Digger” is a disappointing disaster of epic proportions.
Playing at Apple Cinemas Cambridge, AMC Assembly Row 12, Kendall Square Cinema and the Somerville Theatre.
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