Digger

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”