Dig, baby, dig! (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman, Sophia Wilde, Piper Torrens, Mercedes Hernández, Danny Kirrane, Corey Johnson
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Running Time: 129 Minutes
Rating: R for A Bunch of Hot Air (I.e., Profanity)
Release Date: October 2, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is a wealthy oil tycoon and essentially the most powerful man in the world. He’s also a little eccentric, if you know what I mean. But that eccentricity is definitely not what the planet needs at the moment, as a drilling expedition he’s overseeing in Greenland is threatening to cause an apocalyptic climate disaster. But instead of focusing on preventing that, he’s much more concerned about indefinitely extending the life of his beloved, grotesquely ill cat. Eventually, though, he is convinced that he must work alongside the President (John Goodman) and his war room to actually propose some sort of solution. Meanwhile, another story is brewing underneath this catastrophe.
What Made an Impression?: Cover Up Those Holes: To paraphrase the Immortal Bard, Digger is a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I’m happy to see Tom Cruise fully committing himself to a new role, but every calorie of energy he expends makes for a thoroughly exhausting viewing experience. On top of that, President Goodman has to make do with a terminal medical diagnosis in a sensitive area, which is worth a chuckle before it just adds to the tidal wave. Even the relatively restrained performances (emphasis on relatively) from the likes of Riz Ahmed (as Ganesh, a scientist running point for Digger) and Sandra Hüller (as Digger’s sister Emma) just get subsumed into the extremity.
What Might Have Been: Starting around a half hour into the runtime, there are punctures in Digger’s world that reveal a parallel storyline. At my screening, we were requested not to spoil any major reveals, although I have seen other reviews go into detail about this element. So feel free to consult those takes if you want to sate your curiosity ahead of time, but I’ll keep things vague for my analysis. At first I thought this aspect was intriguing enough to pay attention to, but then it started to get about too cute by half. Ultimately when it all clicked into place, I appreciated the fuller picture it provided and wondered why it couldn’t have taken the place of Digger’s antics even earlier.
What If It Were Called “Kenny” Instead?: The one piece of Digger that I’m willing to recommend without reservation is the performance of Jesse Plemons, who’s quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. He plays Kenny, an operator in the margins with a mysterious connection to Digger. With his scraggly, curly mop-top and oddly precise speaking voice, he cuts an inimitable figure, oddly disturbing but also sort of comforting. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the whole film should have been redesigned around him, because a big part of his success has to do with emerging from the shadows. But I do wish that much more of Digger had embodied his offbeat unpredictability.
Digger is Recommended If You Like: Don’t Look Up
Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Glaciers
