Once again Tom Cruise has tried to hit a triple but instead has been immediately caught by the shortstop for a major out. Mr. Cruise’s first non-action role since his Axl Rose impression in 2012’s Rock of Ages was meant to be a bonanza for both the man as well as cinema as a whole. This review is a bit late so by now everyone reading this knows that hasn’t happened and Digger has not received the reception it was aiming for. In fact it has done so badly that, considering how expensive it was to make and market, it’s already considered a major bomb. Part of this is because the marketing hid a humungous plot twist that critics have been begged not to reveal*. But the fact Digger dug a hole, jumped into the hole, and pulled the hole in after it is because that twist tells people something that nobody who pays for movie tickets wants to hear right now.
The thing is that director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who co-wrote the script with Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, is from Mexico. This means he has a worldview very different from those of us in the cosseted West, and therefore understands human fragility and societal failure very differently to people from cozier places. And that’s without observing that the cynicism and nastiness throughout is tough to take, and that’s just the vibe, not the plot. But the plot: Digger Rockwell (Mr. Cruise) is an oil magnate who knows perfectly well his Arctic drilling platforms are unsafe but keeps drilling. When a big big big accident occurs, Digger and his chief scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed giving a very quiet but very funny comedic performance) spend time with the American president (a marvellous John Goodman) and vice president (Michael Stuhlbarg dusting off his Men in Black: International schtick) trying to work out how to maintain plausible deniability. This is extra difficult because Digger is preoccupied with his extremely sick cat, and the president is preoccupied with having cancer in the most embarrassing part of the body. Sandra Hüller wanders around shrieking obscenities, and Jesse Plemons wanders around being Jesse Plemons, more or less. The drab color choices, the camera angles largely from below and the unattractive haircuts are meant to imply that this is a comedy.
The thing is, it’s just not funny. None of this is. And it’s not very funny separate to the plot twist, which isn’t funny either. The marketing made it look like a straightforward bunch of grotesques doing straightforwardly grotesque things – the animatronic puppet of the cat doing a huge amount of the heavy lifting there – but the marketing was misleading. Instead, and without direct spoilers, Digger is post. Post-modern, post-punk, post-comedy, whatever. Everything here is meta. Everything here is irony. Even the big giant Oscar-baiting speech that Rockwell does in a red cowboy suit in front of hundreds of greige extras is not what it was meant to be. This means that, unfortunately, the story of how that sequence was filmed is probably way more interesting than the sequence in itself.
The thing is, throughout the movie I kept thinking of Children of Men, the 2006 thriller about a 2027 without children, and also made by a Mexican director, Alfonso Cuarón. When it came out it was a dark story about a somewhat plausible but definitely ugly possible future. Now that future is nearly here – concentration camps for immigrants, a war machine overseeing all daily life, resistance having to go analogue and a disappointing underuse of Clive Owen – except of course it didn’t all come to pass. Again without direct spoilers, Digger tried to do something similar but did not pull it off. Part of the trouble is this: Clive Owen’s hero in Children of Men was just a guy. When Steven Spielberg made War of the Worlds in 2005 to help America process 9/11, Tom Cruise’s hero was just a guy. What has always made Tom Cruise so fascinating as a big huge movie star is that his schtick has always been that he is just a guy.
The thing is Digger is the first time Mr. Cruise has played the hero as someone who is not just a guy, but already the star of the show. Once again swerving spoilers, Rockwell was not responsible for the total catastrophe, but he was the tipping point. Hee hee ha ha, this is not the story anyone is in the mood for right now! This future might be here, and people from less cozy nations might be screaming their heads off about that fact, but worldwide we are still clinging onto hope that this is not the case. By getting all meta about this, audience laughter at the set-up dies in the throat. By the end, the fact the film still hadn’t figured out that we don’t find this funny starts to choke. No wonder people aren’t buying tickets.
The thing is, the makers gambled that Mr. Cruise’s persona as the last movie star (in spite of all his personal baggage) would enable Digger to succeed regardless. Instead blame is being apportioned to the star falling back down to earth. But it’s not Tom Cruise’s fault Digger struck out. In fact it’s delightful that he weaponised his power to take such a big swing. Digger is a failure because it got too smart about something people take seriously and was laughing while it did it.
The thing is, it could have been good. If the plot twist sections had been more focused on mocking the ordinary human foibles of the people in those situations, it would have been much easier to see the disconnect from the interior world they inhabit and literally everything else. Then we in the audience could have laughed at that disconnect. But somebody decided that everything had to be done with the same tone, with the humour intended to be coming from the physical setting and the appearances of everyone involved. And since right now we don’t think this future is already here, there’s nothing to mock. Digger held up a mirror and asked us to laugh at our own reflections. This is something most people don’t like to do! We all want to be our better selves even if our own actions don’t match up to that. And the thing is, Digger did the same thing.
*I paid for my ticket, so that part doesn’t apply to me, but since I managed to avoid spoilers before going in I will do the same for you.
Digger is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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