Review: Digger's a Dog of Doubled-Down Dumbness

We need our movies to be interesting. Interesting is far more important than good. Better to be an interesting failure than forgettable gruel that passes the time but cannot at any point be called living. A big bold swing that tips into howling absurdity will be long remembered, while the nothingburgers that go down easy won’t last longer than the time it takes them to maneuver through our digestive tracks and plop out the other end. And so we praise the deranged visionaries who wouldn’t know “good taste” if the words were scrawled on a big pink dildo and slapped across their face—the Verhoevens, the Waters. It’s why fifty years on the brand new restoration of Ken Russell’s deliciously blasphemous and long buried The Devils is now the hottest ticket in town. We demand our art shock our doldrums away.

That’s why it’s tempting (against our smarter instincts) to give a director like Alejandro G. Iñárritu the benefit of the doubt when he delivers a pitched-to-the-rafters disaster like Digger, which sees a be-fat-suited Tom Cruise under globby gray old-man make-up cradling an animatronic cat that’s twitching its final death throes—we can after all say with some certainty that that sentence right there is not one that’s been written in the entire history of humanity. And ain’t that worth something, goldurnit?

The problem with Digger is that it’s the phoniest slapdash heap of provocation that’s been dumped on our doorsteps since … well since the last movie Iñárritu made, probably. It’s a claptrap re-assemblage of far more thoughtful and daring artists’ work, on levels both surface and spiritual—hell it’s doesn’t even have the presence of mind nor wit to not drag already-not-good movies into its crap-stew, as Adam Mackay’s dire 2021 political “satire” Don’t Look Up seems its most obvious forebear. This is the sort of movie where you can feel the ground shaking beneath your feet not because of its radical insights or even its ham-boned attempts at such, but because master filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Roy Andersson are violently spinning in their graves at the sight of their work so reprehensibly sanded down and assaulted. And Roy Andersson’s not dead!

Cruise plays the Flintstonian-named Digger Rockwell, a gazillionaire evil oil tycoon who spends most of his time locked away in his mega-mansion and, when not screaming on Zoom calls (or just, you know, screaming generally), rubbing at the aforementioned dying cat’s extremities so it doesn’t turn to quick dust. Digger keeps shoving antibiotics and untested serums into the poor thing because his own need for companionship matters more to him than its continued agony—and much like that cat you too will find yourself begging for the sweet embrace of death, all while Iñárritu and Cruise blather on, and on, and on. Much like the ham-hands of our current President that keep smashing their way into every corner of this film, every accusation is a confession. Just let us die, Alejandro!

Taking place over the span of the several days where Digger discovers his unfettered Greenland drilling has shaken loose an ice shelf that’s about to obliterate the European coastline, this movie drags so many great actors into its oily muck, drowning them face-first. Is that why everyone is constantly screaming their lines? Do they instinctively feel our pain as well? The collective agony they too have now unleashed, much like… well, an iceberg about to oblierate a coastline, actually. Only a few days ago in my review of her film Rose I said that Sandra Hüller has become one of the greatest actors of our generation—well don’t come to Digger looking for that. This film strands even her as the dial snaps right off her performance as Digger’s mildly eco-minded sister—you might think that there’s only so much shrill hysteria that can go around, but you’d be doubting Iñárritu’s commitment to shrieking notions. This movie will make you believe that you’re about to witness the legend John Goodman actually literally die on-screen.

Goodman’s playing the President of the United States, right there on Digger’s speed-dial, and yes he’s very clearly doing a take on you-know-who—it’s long been said it’s impossible to really parody someone as shameless and disgusting as Trump, and if Digger accomplishes nothing else it does finally prove that theory true. Right around the time Goodman’s bowels are letting loose you too will be thinking fondly upon your own ignominious release. But the degradation won’t quit there! Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma D’Arcy, Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed—it’s been awhile since a cast this exceptional has been so fouled and besmirched as this, but one should never second-guess Iñárritu. He’s been at this for decades. (As for Cruise… no.)

It’s not often that a movie will make you point to the king of Austrian severity Michael Haneke as the real laugh riot, but Iñárritu shares Haneke’s moral imperiousness without any of the sly and subtle black comedy that makes Haneke’s films’ survivable experiences. You might scream in agony as the killers in Funny Games wink back at the screen, irreverent in their horror, but at least we’re all sharing a sick joke together. Iñárritu is a whoopee cushion filled with actual flatulence, as if he’s missed the entire point of pretend—it’s intellectual belligerence disguised as wink-wink buffoonery. His movies insist they know better than you, but only because they’ve hacked apart and shoveled the remains of his betters into this bottomless ditch. Well toss the last clump of dirt and be done with it then. RIP Humanity, we had a bad run.