*Note: There are spoilers in this review!

A “comedy of catastrophic proportions”, huh?

Heading into Digger, I assumed it was going to be some sort of movie about the climate crisis, where Digger Rockwell (played by Tom Cruise) would be tasked with fixing a major environmental issue he caused, and would fail miserably because of rich people who are completely incompetent and would rather see the world burn than to make it a better place, which it was, to an extent. 

The film starts off with Digger ignoring a bunch of warnings from a field worker about methane levels in Greenland where his company, Rockwell United, is digging for oil. The lack of action leads to an explosion, which causes a major crisis as a massive block of ice has been broken off and sent hurtling towards Europe. Digger then has a meeting with the president and his cabinet where they decide to basically do nothing except create an information firewall where they block certain terms related to the iceberg from being mentioned online, and hope that the rogue iceberg somehow sorts itself out instead of causing major catastrophe. After the meeting the president has a meeting with Digger where he talks about his health, and…a prop tree falls over in the distance, and a gigantic man pops up out of nowhere to try and fix it, revealing that what we’ve seen for around the first twenty or so minutes was actually part of a play called Fossil Fools, based off of an actual iceberg tragedy that happened in the past.

To be completely honest, I was already losing interest in the movie before it got to this reveal. Minus the throwaway Al Gore mention during the meeting with the cabinet (which got a chuckle out of me when I heard it in the theater), I found the humor incredibly juvenile, like something that would’ve been in a YouTube year-end rewind video in 2013. The twist captured my waning attention and got me re-interested in the movie for a little while, but not for long. 

Watching the rest of Digger felt like watching a Ruben Östlund film: it was preachy towards an audience that didn’t need to be preached to, and it was it was too surface level for it to actually be called a full-on “satire” of anything. The movie had some moments where it tried to give it’s critiques on rich people and their selfishness leading to destruction, but I found them either too surface level, or too tiresome. 

For example, in the middle of the film, there is a long speech by Digger where he stands in front of European parliament and tells everyone that while he may be able to claim responsibility for the iceberg catastrophe, everyone in parliament is also at fault because they love oil, and they don’t care about investing in renewable energy because they love how it has served them well up until now. The rant is very theatrical: Tom Cruise jumps around parliament like he’s on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2005, people are pulling out their phones after a physical altercation breaks out (which I guess was some sort of parody of people who just record things without actually helping anyone), and parliament randomly bursts into a chorus of “blah blah blah” in the midst of the speech, where my “this movie is insisting upon itself” alarm bells were ringing at maximum volume. There are some good points made in the rant, mainly how rich and powerful people can’t claim they aren’t responsible when they are some of the main investors in the root cause of the environmental issues, but I think where it falls flat is that these are conversations we, the audience have already been a part of for quite some time now. 

Yes, we know rich people are selfish and only care about their own interests. We know they would rather see the world burn than sacrifice money for the greater good. But why should we applaud a movie for making observations that the world has already made?

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In addition to being a climate crisis black comedy, the film is also a commentary on how comedy and satire can bring people together and give people comfort through difficult times, hence the big “this is actually a play” twist. 

“Digger Rockwell” turns out to be a character played by actor Curtis Markson, who is dealing with his own personal issues when he discovers that a plane with his daughter on it has disappeared. Throughout the film, we see him struggling to juggle this information alongside his frustrations with the role he is playing, reminiscent of Gena Rowlands’s character in the John Cassavetes film, Opening Night. The struggles eventually lead to a breakdown during rehearsal where Markson states how he feels the play makes the characters feel too cartoonish compared to their real-life counterparts, and makes light of the real tragedies that happened. 

The director of the play then launches into a passionate speech about how the play is actually funny (it’s not, even though she kept insisting it was) and how people need to be able to laugh to process their anger and grief from the iceberg catastrophe, which would’ve been a more effective message had the play in the movie been comedic in literally any way, shape, or form. You can’t make a movie about needing to make people laugh, and then not make anyone laugh throughout the entirety of the movie. Digger had the pieces to make a great artistic statement, but the execution left a lot to be desired. 

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With Alejandro González Iñárritu as the director, Tom Cruise as the lead, Digger felt like it was poised to be an Oscar contender, but it ultimately fell flat with tired comedy and surface-level satire. 

I will say, visually, the movie is stunning. I loved the use of color throughout the film, and I thought the set designs for the entire movie were fantastic. However, the concept of the movie didn’t quite land for me, and the narrative was a quite tedious one to sit through for its two hour runtime.