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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/10\/01\/movies\/digger-review-tom-cruise-alejandro-inarritu.html?emc=edit_nn_20261002&nl=the-morning&segment_id=227407",
    "parsed_content": "What to Watch70 Movies This Fall\u2018Digger\u2019\u2018Verity\u2019\u2018NAZA\u2019\u2018Lady\u2019\u2018Primetime\u2019AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u2018Digger\u2019 Review: Even Tom Cruise Can\u2019t Save This Strained SatireThough mightily he does try. The star brings his usual high energy to the role of a Texas oil tycoon in Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s ponderous climate comedy.Listen \u00b7 6:23 min Share full articleTom Cruise, right, with Ross Hatt and Maggie the cat in \u201cDigger.\u201d Credit...Warner Bros. Pictures By Manohla DargisOct. 1, 2026Leer en espa\u00f1olDiggerDirected by Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rrituComedy, DramaR2h 9mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google \u201cDigger\u201d is such a lumbering white elephant of a movie that it almost makes you sorry for everyone involved. Making movies is always tough, and it can be harder still when a big studio production tries to say something. This one has an original script, good actors and a hefty budget. It also has enough visual attractions and distractions to keep your eyes fixed on the screen, even when your mind wanders to imponderables like: Why did Tom Cruise make this? Why does he look like that? Did anyone involved have the guts to tell him that this was a bad idea? And what on earth was the director, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, thinking?Digger Save to your watch list:Want to watchHave seenIt\u2019s a big and frenetic thing, crammed with gargoyle faces and a great deal of frantic scurrying. The largest, loomingest face belongs to Cruise\u2019s Digger Rockwell, a Texas oil tycoon, whose enterprises lead to a climate catastrophe that takes up much of the movie. To play the role, Cruise, as is his custom, has gone all in for the role and drastically transformed his appearance with facial prosthetics, thinning hair and belly-forward padding. For the most part, he seems to enjoy peering and scowling from underneath these uglifying contrivances. He looks \u2014 and on occasion moves \u2014 like himself, only grayer, jowlier and heavier.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn some moments, Digger evokes Orson Welles\u2019s monstrous creation Charles Foster Kane, an association that does this movie no favors. Each character is obscenely wealthy and politically influential, and both have important totems that are meant to express an ineluctable truth about them. Kane, of course, has a sled (the mysterious \u201cRosebud\u201d) that he played with as a child before everything changed for him, while Digger has the shovel that his grandfather was using when he discovered his first oil deposit. The shovel now hangs above a massive fireplace in Digger\u2019s mansion, one of those lavish, sprawling estates that the wealthy build as monuments to themselves and which invariably become mausoleums.The first chunk of the movie largely concerns Digger\u2019s scrupulously art-directed world, a bespoke lair with wood paneling, taxidermied trophies and a large dressing mirror adorned with antlers. As I\u00f1\u00e1rritu tours the house like an excited docent, characters enter and exit like old-fashioned movie clowns. Sandra H\u00fcller storms in briefly, huffing and puffing, as Digger\u2019s sister, Emma. She splits too soon, but other appealing performers cycle through, including John Goodman as the blustering American president and Michael Stuhlbarg as the flailing vice president. It\u2019s a measure of Digger\u2019s muscle that both characters come to him, visiting his mansion after a disaster in one of his Arctic oil fields turns potentially apocalyptic.The movie was written \u2014 if you\u2019re reading this aloud, you may want to take a deep breath \u2014 by I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicol\u00e1s Giacobone and Sabina Berman, from a story by Berman, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and Jez Butterworth. It\u2019s unclear who came up with the name Digger Rockwell, though presumably someone found it funny; per its production notes, the movie is a satire. Despite the popping eyeballs, swiveling heads, flapping jaws and a few scenes that I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has tried to direct in a cutesy Wes Anderson-esque key, the results are largely mirthless. That\u2019s the case even when Digger fawns over his incontinent antique cat, Maggie, a puppetlike critter who\u2019s so ostentatiously artificial that her appearance is initially confusing.ImageRiz Ahmed and other fine actors can\u2019t salvage the material the director Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and a team of writers has supplied. Credit...Warner Bros. Pictures The reason for her animatronic-like physiognomy becomes clear when the movie shifts into a belabored, self-reflexive register that is exponentially less engaging. The aforementioned production notes given to critics include a politely worded request not to ostensibly spoil \u201cDigger\u201d by revealing some of the twists \u2014 which I assume means that they don\u2019t want me to write that the oil man and his slippery gang are characters in an elaborate stage production. This information doesn\u2019t add much, though it invites another unflattering comparison, in this case to Charlie Kaufman\u2019s \u201cSynecdoche, New York,\u201d a rich, philosophically minded puzzle about a theater director who\u2019s staging a production that closely replicates his life.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIntentionally or not, \u201cDigger\u201d routinely evokes other films, including I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s \u201cBirdman\u201d (2014), which more successfully plays with the divide between reality and representation. All that said, there are some nice moments now and again in \u201cDigger,\u201d which features another eerily destabilizing performance from Jesse Plemons that makes you want to follow his character to wherever he\u2019s going. The relative restraint and expressive specificity of Plemons\u2019s performance \u2014 his character holds his gaze on other people a touch too long, and his smile seems backlit by madness \u2014 is a relief, given the rest of the cast\u2019s cartoony turns. It\u2019s a bummer to see actors like Goodman, Stuhlbarg and Riz Ahmed so badly handled.As usual, Cruise works hard here, but while his performance as Digger is certainly animated, it\u2019s also a collection of moments \u2014 speeches, actions, gestures, grimaces \u2014 that never cohere. If anything, all of Cruise\u2019s strenuous energy helps weigh down an already ponderous movie, which isn\u2019t entirely on him, even if he is one of the producers. He\u2019s obviously set out to try something different after a string of action blockbusters, but he\u2019s sunk by this movie\u2019s half-baked ideas and badly served by a director as self-serious as he is. For all his smiling, Cruise no longer has the earnest charm he did earlier in his career, and over the years his persona has often seemed as leaden as petrified wood. If that rarely matters, it\u2019s because he\u2019s so good playing a role that this movie simply doesn\u2019t understand: Tom Cruise, star extraordinaire.DiggerRated R for language. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. In theaters.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-10-01T09:02:06+00:00",
    "author_name": "Manohla Dargis",
    "site_name": "The New York Times",
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    "ai_headline": "\u2018Digger\u2019 Review: Even Tom Cruise Can\u2019t Save This Strained Satire",
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    "ai_excerpt": "Manohla Dargis reviews Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu's film 'Digger,' starring Tom Cruise as a Texas oil tycoon. Despite Cruise's efforts, the film is criticized as a ponderous and mirthless satire.",
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