Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest film “Digger” looks quite ambitious at first but then eventually ends up digging not so much on the whole. As I struggled to adjust myself its broadly and unevenly shrill tone during its first half, I came to have some ideas on what the director tries to convey to us, but I also found myself getting more distant to its story and characters without much care. In the end, we are only left with some grand artistic gestures from the director and the deliberately hammy effort from his lead actor, and that is not enough for recommendation in my humble opinion.
By the way, when there were several previews right before when the movie was officially released in South Korean today, the audiences attending these previews were advised not to reveal any possible spoiler about the film. Although I watched the film early in this morning, I guess I also have to follow this instruction for any audience wanting to watch the movie without being exposed to any spoiler. Therefore, please do not read further if you are one of such audiences.
Okay, now let me describe what is unfolded during the early part of the screenplay by Iñárritu and his co-writers Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman, which is developed from the story by Berman, Iñárritu, and their co-writer Jex Butterworth. After the rather surreal opening scene, we are introduced to Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), a wealthy Texan oil tycoon who has been clearly cocooned inside his power and wealth for years. While there comes an alarming report from his big oil rig located somewhere in Greenland, all he cares about is 1) whether that will jeopardize his business and 2) whether his dying pet cat will survive another day of its increasingly miserable existence.
Needless to say, things soon begin to fall apart from Digger. Something quite catastrophic happens on that oil rig in Greenland, and that can be just the beginning of more catastrophes to come. The US President, played by John Goodman, and his cronies including the vice president played by Michael Stuhlbarg immediately come to Digger’s big residence for an emergency meeting, but, not so surprisingly, they are no better than those bumbling figures in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) or Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” (2021).
Now it sounds like a potentially rich ground for satire, but the movie unfortunately bludgeons us with relentlessly broad touches here and there. Almost everyone in the film including Digger himself are extremely exaggerated caricatures (They mostly look as pale and cadaverous as the characters in Roy Andersson’s Living Trilogy, by the way), and they usually shout or scream a lot just for emphasizing how stupid or deluded or incompetent they really are. To make the matters worse, the score by Cosmo Sheldrake is so cacophonously intrusive here and there that you may often mistake it for some sloppy job by the sound department of the movie.
Maybe the main point of this abrasively warped satire of the movie is intended to reflect how chaotic and idiotic our world has become during these days, but then it only lets itself getting diffused as taking a sudden left turn for revealing the other main narrative beneath what has been unfolded during its first 40 minutes. Now, if you are still reading this review but really want to any spoiler nonetheless, I ask you again not to read further.
Okay, now I can tell you that what has been presented on the screen is actually the rehearsal process of a big theater production of a certain play about Digger. Around that point, you will be certainly reminded of Iñárritu’s previous Oscar-winning film “Birdman” (2014), but, sadly, the movie fails to fly as high as that amusing backstage comedy movie without bringing much depth or humor to its story and characters. Unlike the desperately struggling hero of “Birdman”, we never get to know or understand that much about the actor playing Digger on the stage, and everything around him remains as more or less than mere background details. At least, the movie tries to make some point on the meaning of art later in the story, and that feels too hollow and superficial besides being too late to save the film from digging down further without much substance.
In case of Tom Cruise, this probably looked like a good opportunity to go all the way with the certain parts of his acting ability which have been quite dormant during last 25 years. There are indeed several showy moments where he chews every line of his with unrestrained gusto, but he is still limited a lot by his utterly superficial character, and so are many other notable main cast members including Goodman and Stuhlbarg. While Sandra Hüller is totally wasted in her thankless supporting part, Riz Ahmed manages to bring a bit of intelligence to his character even though there is not much he can do from the beginning, and Jesse Plemons provides a little but thankful dose of calmness to the screen during his brief appearance later in the story.
In conclusion, “Digger” is another regrettably self-indulgent misfire from Iñárritu after “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” (2022). As I think more about the ending of the film, I sense that he sincerely hopes that we will still be able to enjoy and appreciate those acts of art including cinema even when things fall apart a lot for all of us in the end, but his movie only scratches the surface without truly digging deep into its comic ideas and materials, and that is really a shame.
