Cruise's boldest work yet holds together a film that often strains under its own weight.
Verdict tier Recommended, most critics liked it, on a scale of Unfavorable, Mixed, Recommended, Exceptional.
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Critic consensus
Critical reception for Digger is mixed-to-positive, with most reviewers acknowledging the film's ambition while remaining divided on its execution. Tom Cruise's against-type performance is the most consistently praised element, with several critics noting his willingness to shed his established screen persona in service of the role. The most common criticism centers on the film's narrative excess and self-indulgence — reviewers frequently describe it as messy, overly ornate, and too absorbed in its own meta-commentary, with the climactic structural choices drawing particular skepticism. Iñárritu's audacious direction is acknowledged even by detractors, though some find it tipping into smugness and exhausting self-congratulation.
4 not-rated reviews aren't plotted
Positive = 6.5/10 and up · negative = below 5/10
AI-generated summary of 9 critic reviews · may contain errors
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Film review ·
Tom Cruise takes his career's biggest leap in Digger, touching down from his gravity-defying stunts to explore the rock bottom of human vice in Alejandro Iñárritu's satire. There couldn't have been a more poetic fit for Digger Rockwell than Tom Cruise, who delivers a performance that validates the filmmaker's unconventional choice for this character study of unchecked greed and capitalistic complicity.
Film review ·
Tom Cruise lets go of the suave, sexy image and embraces the gloriously unsexy with supreme confidence, making this truly impossible mission utterly possible. Flaws and all, Digger is a film that refuses to play it safe. At a time when big-screen entertainment is becoming increasingly formulaic, the film works as a gloriously bonkers reminder that cinema can still surprise you.
Film review
Alejandro Iñárritu's dystopian farcical tale unfolds like a fascinating mystery, a strange puzzle layered with two glorious twists that leave you utterly spellbound. The discovery of Iñárritu's singular execution and the audacity of his vision, revealed through the intricate construction of his storytelling is so vivid and immersive that you remain glued to your seat, revelling in its sheer brilliance long after the end credits have rolled.
Film review ·
The reason why "Digger" is a nobler and more rewarding failure than "Birdman" or "Bardo" is because it doesn't have to pretend that Digger Rockwell is a real person. He's a living cartoon who's exempted from the human foundation that was missing from those earlier films, and — for all of this movie's psych-outs and detours — that allows Iñárritu to address his existential crises with a greater directness and degree of relatability.
Film review
Digger is messy, excessive and sometimes self-conscious to a fault. It is also visually audacious, unexpectedly funny and anchored by a performance that reminds you why Tom Cruise remains such a compelling movie star when he steps outside the machinery that made him one.
Film review
On the whole, DIGGER is a sharply satirical film that has its share of engaging moments but is held back by its confusing and experimental narrative. Nevertheless, Tom Cruise's towering presence and never-before-seen avatar will ensure that the film finds a sizeable audience.
Film review
The film is so absorbed in itself that it plays with its ideas a little too freely and shoves so many irons into the fire, so the later scenes feel disconnected from what it set out to show at the start. The underlying trouble is with the central idea and the way Iñárritu chose to approach it.
Film review ·
An exasperatingly shallow, laborious, self-congratulatory satire with a trick up its sleeve, featuring very good actors giving not very good performances. This film finds itself in a postmodern hole.
Film review
Digger is a hard-hitting, earnest film, as long as it talks about climate change and greed. Yet all this effort turns on its head when Jesse Plemons walks onto the set, quite literally. And this one scene becomes the downfall of Digger. Iñárritu tries so hard to build a movie about climate change and corruption that the stakes disappear into thin air when the metacommentary is added in the climax.
Film review
Digger is basically what happens when you put two outsize egos together with nobody holding the reins to keep their most self-indulgent impulses in check. But put me in the camp of those who most definitely did not dig it. His eighth feature is so meta that you watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there's another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.
Film review ·
Digger is deliberately drawn as a human Foghorn Leghorn, with a generous helping of Les Grossman's vulgarity, and Cruise attacks the part with the exact kind of shamelessness that made the latter one of his great comic performances. It is too loud and ornate, and entirely intoxicated by its own smugness. But its anger is real, and so is the sadness beneath it.
Film review ·
"Digger" isn't funny. It's nervy, in your face, adventurous, and bizarro in a free-swinging, out-of-the-box way. But "Dr. Strangelove," built around the genius of Peter Sellers, was brilliantly funny. "Digger" borrows the doomsday architecture of "Strangelove" but leaves out the slyness, replacing it with a lavishly overscaled spectacle that mistakes extremity for vision.
Credits
Tom CruiseDigger Rockwell
Riz AhmedGanesh
John GoodmanPresident Compson
Sandra HüllerEmma
Michael StuhlbargVice President
Jesse PlemonsKenny
Robert John Burke
Emma D'ArcyLina
Burn GormanAmos
Sophie Wilde
Pip Torrens
Mercedes HernándezDigger's Housekeeper
Danny KirraneSandy Clarkson
James Dryden
Corey JohnsonJacobs
Charlie BentleyEU Ambassador (uncredited)English films like Digger
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