Tom Cruise’s climate satire “Digger” lands as neither innovative nor funny, a Fox News critic says, a preachy awards-season mess that fails the basic tests of satire.
Fox News Digital media reporter Joseph A. Wulfsohn rates the Warner Bros. Pictures release “★★, SKIP IT” and calls it easily the biggest misfire of awards season.
The film is in theaters now. It runs 2 hours and 9 minutes and carries an R rating for pervasive language. Legendary Pictures shares the credit with Warner Bros.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an eccentric oil tycoon nearly unrecognizable under heavy prosthetics. Rockwell dotes on his wealth and on Maggie, a chronically ill, robotic-like cat. The performance, Wulfsohn notes, becomes a mishmash of past Cruise roles delivered in one-note yelling.
Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who directed and co-wrote the 2014 Best Picture winner “Birdman,” swings big and takes bold narrative risks. The result, the review says, still collapses under its own weight.
Wulfsohn puts the standard plainly before the verdict.
"A great satire must be two things: innovative and funny. Unfortunately for Tom Cruise and Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, "Digger" is neither of those things."
The plot centers on Rockwell Corp’s costly drilling in Greenland. A crack at the site draws warnings. Then, seemingly in the blink of an eye, a small crack becomes an explosion. A massive ice shelf breaks off and heads straight toward Europe. Officials fear a tsunami and mass flooding that could hit tens of millions of Europeans.
President Compson, played by John Goodman, and an evangelical cabinet rush to Rockwell’s remote, taxidermy-filled estate for damage control. Wulfsohn notes that Compson clearly borrows elements from Donald Trump, then contrasts that cartoon with the real man he calls nuanced.
Cruise has bet big on this radical departure with Iñárritu. The gamble shows on screen. The movie keeps reaching for “Dr. Strangelove” and the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up,” yet never earns the comparison.
Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, the soft-spoken scientist who has been sounding the alarm about the drilling. Wulfsohn says Ahmed is the only cast member who remotely gives a compelling performance.
Sandra Hüller, the Oscar-nominated German actress, plays Digger’s half sister Emma. Her screen time, the review notes, goes to complaining that the global disaster will hurt her environmental nonprofit, which Digger funds anyway. Jesse Plemons appears in the credited cast. Ross Hatt plays Dr. Berg.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki delivers stunning visuals. Composer Cosmo Sheldrake supplies a whimsical score. Craft alone does not fix the script.
Wulfsohn’s core complaint is simple. Preachiness crowds out humor. Performances stay stuck on one note. The film wants to scold oil, money, and power, then wonders why the laughs never arrive.
That pattern fits a wider Hollywood habit: turn a climate lecture into prestige packaging and call it satire. Audiences get the finger-wagging. They do not get invention or wit.
Cruise has also backed the Warner Bros.-Paramount merger and vouched for a heavy theatrical slate. Studio ambition is not the problem on display here. Storytelling is.
Reporting has already tracked how Cruise’s climate lecture film steers toward a nine-figure flop. A movie that cannot amuse or surprise gives ticket buyers little reason to show up.
Wulfsohn closes the case without soft edges.
"Despite Cruise and Iñárritu's best efforts, "Digger" is truly a mess of a film that's unworthy of the work we're used to seeing from the two of them."
He adds the awards-season line that sticks: it is easily the biggest misfire of the season. The grade remains two stars and a clear skip.
Merger politics will keep rolling in Washington and New York, including fights over foreign money and settlement deals. None of that revises what is on the screen. A satire that forgets to be funny is just a speech with better lighting.
When Hollywood confuses a lecture for art, audiences are right to walk out, and critics are right to say so.
