A study in justification of one’s actions, “Digger” is a dark satire, touched by farce, of narrative control in the face of crisis. Tom Cruise, disguised by an inch of aging make-up, fake teeth and an elaborate comb-over, plays Digger Rockwell, the world’s most powerful oil tycoon. Eccentric, greedy and immoral – “Mr. Rockwell is a man who would roast our children alive if he thought he could sell them for a dime,” says scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) – he does not like bad news. When he gets bad news about the stability of one of his oil platforms, he ignores it and the resulting explosion causes havoc, creating an ice shelf the size of Washington, D.C., on a collision course with western Europe. “Digger here got us into this mess,” says the president of the United States (John Goodman), “and Digger’s gonna dig us out again.” Rather than accept blame for the worldwide chaos, Digger treats the situation not as a catastrophe, but as a branding problem. “Panic is a resource,” he says. “When you’re running away from a house fire, no one cares who left the toaster on.” With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Digger tries to save his company and himself by controlling the narrative. “They know the facts,” he says. “The story is yet to be told.” Echoes of “Dr. Strangelove” reverberate throughout “Digger.” Both are absurdist nightmare comedies that skewer the egos and ideologies of powerful men, and both focus on managing the narrative of a crisis rather than dealing with it. But the cool, deadpan vibe of Stanley Kubrick’s film is replaced by a passionate, outlandish feel that will certainly divide audiences. It’s a big movie, filled with big ideas, even if they sometimes get lost in the sheer grandiosity of the filmmaking. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who co-wrote the script with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, presents a riff on the old saying, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But in Digger Rockwell’s world, corruption goes hand in hand with control, because that’s where the power is. Controlling the narrative is more important than solving the problem. Digger’s a bad guy, ignorant, tacky and narcissistic, but he’s the hero of his own invented narrative, and in an era of fake news and misinformation, it’s a timely and scary reality check. The absurd and often jaundiced take on the machinery of power from Digger’s house to the White House and beyond is not subtle. Iñárritu takes big swings here narratively and stylistically, and his ambition pays off in fits and starts. Some scenes, like a sequence of Digger, the U.S. president and various generals watching the iceberg collide with land are darkly hilarious. Or Cruise’s 10-minute amphitheatre monologue, which fires on all cylinders. But overall, “Digger” values audacity, ambition and theatrics over narrative clarity. Not funny enough to be a satire, too outrageous to be straight drama, it lands in a tonal wasteland, wavering between silly and sincerity. The parts of “Digger” that work, however, work very well. Goodman lets his freak flag fly as the beleaguered POTUS and Ahmed, as the pushed-to-the-brink climate scientist, hands in a career-best performance. Cruise nails the farcical elements of the character, but lets the more intimate, realistic moments breathe in a performance that will likely draw attention from the Academy at Oscar time. The titular character brags that the world is powered by his fossil fuels, but his movie is fuelled by something else: audacity. It is a truly unique film, the kind that doesn’t usually feature such high-priced talent, but this audacious environmental drama is bordered by self-indulgence, and at times is a chore to sit through. 3 stars out of 5
