Publication Date: 10-05-2026

Digger (2026) review

Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

NOTE: I‘m not prepared to beat around the bush with Digger, so this review will contain spoilers.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger is the kind of movie that I might watch again in short order and declare a masterpiece. It might also be one I revisit and struggle to finish and wonder why I was so kind to it in the first place. On that basis alone, it’s one of the most intriguing movies of the year.

Going into Iñárritu’s latest, I knew as much as the poster told me: “Tom Cruise is Digger,” similar to how Rihanna was Smurfette a year ago. I’ve yet to see a trailer that evident whatever excitement the masses had about Cruise taking on a role in which he’d ostensibly not put his life on the line. Instead, Iñárritu’s film is a bait-and-switch, metatextual work ala Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City.

This is a play-within-a-film that doesn’t make you aware of such a fact until about 25 minutes into its runtime. There are indeed clues, looking back, such as an ugly animatronic cat and some clearly artificial set design if you look closely. Tom Cruise is an actor named Curtis Markson, who is tasked with playing a multi-billionaire oilman named Digger Rockwell on stage. Digger is a thick-tongued, southern fried narcissist, so caddish and egotistical he’d make Jerry Jones appear humble if they shared a room together. Surrounded by doting sycophants in his opulent mansion, he tries to tend to his dying feline, but is interrupted with news of a major environmental disaster related to one of his oil mining operations. Shortly thereafter, a scientist named Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) arrives to inform him that an iceberg the size of the state of Maryland has broken loose and is headed directly for Europe, with unforeseeable human casualties, flooding, and destruction imminent. Digger has the ailing President (John Goodman) in his back-pocket, and the two of them, along with other members of the oligarchic class, hurl insults at Dr. Ganesh as he tries to articulate a solution.

It is about this time that part of the set comes crashing down, and we see that this is actually a dress rehearsal for a satirical stage-play called Fossil Fools, which is due to premiere that evening. Between acts, Curtis is fretting over the sudden disappearance of his missing daughter, who is flying in for the show amidst a massive hurricane. Meanwhile, Curtis is increasingly frustrated with the play’s director, Hannah (Sophie Wilde), over the story’s playful treatment of deadly, real-world events. The play itself is the product of Jesse Plemons’ Kenny Rockwell, Digger’s nephew, who has authored the biting work on the devastation his father’s country unleashed on the world.

There you have it. The mysterious new film Digger is actually a cleverly concocted story of the nephew of a trillionaire oil tycoon, whose business practices caused societal destruction, bankrolling a tacky, off-Broadway production about his uncle that vilifies him but also glorifies him, similar to The Wolf of Wall Street. Once the quartet of writers (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman) reveal that the story of Digger we’re watching is actually a dramatization, it justifies Cruise’s broad, scenery-chewing performance, which we now know is playing to the cheap-seats. He’s not the only one. Goodman is absolutely bonkers here, blurting orders and screaming about the cancer festering in his asshole. This premise is so wild that even Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) snaps out of her usual stoicism. Destined to go unnoticed is Corey Johnson as the head of the American Navy, who mirrors the braggadocios nature of the current fool America has in charge of the military.

Digger defies conventionality by having “reality” interrupt the dress rehearsal, which takes some time getting used to, and I contend doesn’t always work. The subplot of Curtis’ missing daughter never worked for me, even if its existence as a plot-point is to show the external relevance of the current environmental climate in America and how the actions of Digger’s company and runaway climate change have made the Earth a borderline uninhabitable hellhole. It’s a lot more interesting to discuss than endure, and when you have actors like Cruise, Goodman, and Ahmed throwing themselves into roles that require them to be more stage actors than movie actors, the radical tonal shifts are liable to pull you out of what’s happening and the madness you’re witnessing.

Because the twist is revealed so early in the picture, you might find yourself recalibrating the way you’re watching it. All of a sudden, it makes sense how/why Curtis would be monologuing to fiery, violent members of Congress for an upwards of 10 minutes, in what is the film’s tentpole scene (a masterful one at that). Suddenly, blocking and choreography becomes a focal point when everyone is “in character.” The oppressively gaudy set design suddenly has a reason to exist, as does the color palette, which is often as gray and as desaturated as the makeup on Cruise’s face.

The only aesthetic element I found consistently annoying was the atmospheric, oft-staccato score. Cosmo Sheldrake doesn’t overplay certain scenes in the conventional sense. Instead, it drowns them out with frothy compositions that marry flutes with woodwinds, synthesizers, and what at times sounds like chirping birds. It grates on the ears.

Iñárritu’s move to make Digger about a lot of socially potent ideas in a loud, bombastic manner recalls Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17. This is a conscious picture which questions if satire truly has the power to bring meaningful social change, or if it’s merely a way for us to laugh at real-world atrocities and the people behind them by turning it into theater spectacle. Insatiable greed and the consistent bleeding of the middle and working class is as common as finding gas prices that’ll make your stomach turn in this economy, and they’re put on display in such brazen ways in Digger that it’s understandable why the masses might not want to pay high ticket prices to witness something they can just as well watch unfold on Twitter. I’d argue how Digger is about what it’s about steps on its toes at times, and draws us more to questioning the setup and structure more-so than listening to what its individuals are saying, both when they’re in character and step out of it. That the movie comes on the heels of Warner Bros. Discovery being swallowed by Paramount Skydance, just as it’s set to lose an upwards of $150 million in production and marketing costs, is an irony so delicious, I hope its investors lose a vacation home or three at the least. All of this can be true in the same way that it’s true that Alejandro G. Iñárritu has made one of the year’s most ambitious and timely movies. I’ll take one of these, warts and all, over another Mission: Impossible movie eight days a week.

Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Corey Johnson. Directed by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu.